


Static

by glasslogic



Series: Fortress [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bloodplay, Demon Dean, M/M, Road-trip, dub con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-12 06:49:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 62,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2099679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasslogic/pseuds/glasslogic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lilith's plans are in shambles and the door to Lucifer's cage has been well and truly lost, but Dean is still a demon and Sam is still bound to him with a stolen curse of sex and blood. All things considered, though, Sam's life could be worse and he is making peace not just with Dean, but with his own growing psychic gifts and the barrage of seemingly meaningless visions they inflict on him. But strange winds are starting to blow and after a series of disasters strike, Sam discovers that the greatest danger may be in the secrets that still lie between him and Dean. If Sam can't fix things before time runs out it won't be the Apocalypse, but it will still be the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

  **Prologue**

We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark  
and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight.  
                                                    ~From Beyond, H.P. Lovecraft

Lilith stood alone in an empty house, pale pink pajamas clashing with the thick streaks of crimson on small, delicate hands. She had always had an affinity for little girls. The shock and horror as people realized that what was looking out of wide eyes was in no way young or innocent added a special delicious edge to their fear. Lilith was all about edges.  
  
She stepped lightly over the corpses of loving parents and strode out into the night, unconcerned with the bloody footprints she left in her wake. It had taken her weeks of struggle to regain enough strength to claim a new body after the disaster of Illchester, but she had that strength now, and safe within the shell of stolen flesh, she cast her senses wide to see what had happened in her absence.  
  
Frustration like Lilith could never remember experiencing twisted in her at the memory of those last few moments in the convent. They had worked for _so long_. Everything had seemed perfect in the beginning. Lucifer’s plan all those long, long ages ago when he had first tricked the angels of Hell into their trap, that living layer of power that forced them deep into Entropy and away from the world. Hell’s guardians then dealt with, Lucifer had carved out the Rendering for his followers, a place for them to feast and grow strong off the terror and pain of every soul that entered the domain. They made the Entropic Plane a place to be feared.  
  
But they had misjudged their enemies. Even bound deep in Entropy, the angels of Hell had struck back, grabbing tight hold of the most powerful and fiercest of Lucifer’s followers and pulling them deep into the chaos winds as well until all of their strength and power was spent simply maintaining their identities against the inexorable pull of dissolution. Then, with the strongest neutralized and Lucifer himself distracted with their plight, Michael had sprung his own trap and locked their Master away in the Cage.  
  
Lucifer’s followers despaired, but not for long. Somewhere there was a lock, and to that lock a key. They need only be patient and watchful, and they would still have what was promised --dominion and power over all in the World and in Hell. But when finally, _finally_ , the day had come when the lock was revealed and the key brought to light, once _again_ everything was snatched from their grasp.  
  
They had plotted and planned for millennia to free Lucifer to claim his throne. Thousands of years of searching and waiting, hoarding power and hiding alliances, all for that one moment when the fruits of their long labor would be realized and their Lord would usher in a new age, their vision of what the Plane should be.  
  
All that long hope obliterated in an instant by one human, a mayfly existence beneath her notice had he not been so vital to their plans through an accident of fate and lineage. _Samuel Winchester_.  
  
She mouthed the name quietly, but no direction came to mind. He was well and truly buried behind wards and power that smothered his presence to her simple detection. Just as well. She was still furious enough that had he been in easy reach she might have done something... rash. He was still the only key to the lock on Lucifer’s cage, and as soon as she found the door again, she would need him to open it. His willingness was not necessary. Not even desirable anymore. She wanted to watch him writhe, to see the knowledge of what was happening as she forced him to shatter the last seal. She would never get to witness his expression as her Master crushed his will, but Lilith could envision the moment and it was _glorious_.  
  
Samuel hadn’t even really been the problem; she had dealt with him handily enough -- it was his _brother_. Without Dean Winchester’s interference, Samuel would have been easy prey. She had thought Dean safely out of the way in Hell. He had been useful to her there, but then surprised her with his... resiliency. And his strength. And his choice of allies; though in his position, she might have clung to any offered hand as well. She would have to see him destroyed, but the matter wasn’t her most pressing. Until she found the cage again, he would serve as a suitable guardian for Samuel’s life.  
  
Many of Lucifer’s powerful and faithful had been gathered at Illchester to welcome their Master’s return, and when Samuel had shattered that ward, banishing them from borrowed flesh and scattering them to the wind... they would have still been in the World. The magic hadn’t been strong enough to drive them from the Plane, just hamper them for a while.  
  
She wanted to know what the demons had been up to, wanted to know if they had begun to search again for the door to their Master’s prison. She didn’t trust their dedication without direction to guide it; she needed to know what had been happening in the weeks that she had been gone.  
  
And when she found out, she began to laugh.

 

** Chapter One **

"I have grown to believe that a stone is a better pillow than many visions"  
                                                       ~Robinson Jeffers, Clouds of Evening

Bobby opened his eyes in the dawn stillness of his quiet bedroom. The air was cool and his sheets were warm, with only the gentle rustling of wind outside in the trees to break the silence. He glanced over at his alarm clock and swore. Good sleep was a rarity anyway, but he’d been sleeping a lot worse lately and he knew exactly who to blame for it. The sun was barely above the horizon, leaving him to pick his way through the long shadows of early morning on his way to the kitchen. Bobby glanced through the open door of the guest bedroom as he passed it in the hall, but the tangled sheets of the twin bed were empty and no doubt cold.  
  
He wasn’t at all surprised to find Sam in the kitchen with the lights off and his head resting on folded arms.  
  
Bobby flipped the light switch on.  
  
“You look like hell,” he greeted his guest.  
  
Sam winced at the sudden brightness, rumpled and barely awake. He sat up with a yawn. “What are you doing up so early?”  
  
“Breathing,” Bobby grunted and looked in the pantry to see what kind of groceries were on hand. “I hadn’t planned on getting up with the sun, but something keeps disturbing my rest.”  
  
“Yeah, sorry about that.” Sam did look sorry, but mostly he looked exhausted.  
  
“Screaming in the middle of the night is a little hard to ignore.” Bobby leaned against the counter, face lined with concern. “You ever get back to sleep?”  
  
“Didn’t even try. I had enough nightmares for one night.”  
  
Bobby nodded in understanding and bent to dig through the fridge. “Where’s the demon?”  
  
“Bobby...” Sam started wearily.  
  
“He lives in my house, eats my food, uses my tools, and argues with me about the timing belt on my own damn truck. We’ve made our peace with each other, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna forget for one instant what he is now. He might be --I don't know-- _reformed_ , but we can't ignore what he is. Your brother's still a demon, Sam. And part of not ignoring that is knowing what he’s up to when he’s not dodging your shadow.”  
  
The rumble of the Impala in the yard answered the question before Sam had to. A minute later the dull thud of a booted foot kicking against the frame had Bobby opening the door with a narrow-eyed look.  
  
“Morning, Bobby.” Dean walked in, hands full of hot coffee and a brown paper bag tucked under one arm. Whatever he had in there smelled fantastic and Bobby decided to forgive Dean for any damage to the paint. As long as there was something in the bag for him.  
  
“What’d you bring?”  
  
“Sausage egg biscuits.” Dean handed him a steaming cup of coffee and set another on the table next to Sam’s elbow. Sam had his head back on his arms and barely bothered looking up.  
  
Dean passed the biscuits out then glared at Sam until his brother reluctantly straightened up again and started eating.  
  
Bobby waited until he had a few bites of his own breakfast in his belly before addressing the problem at hand. “I’ve been patient, but this is getting out of hand. Sam, you’ve woken me up ten nights out of the last fourteen. I can handle the interrupted nights, but you look like you’re about to drop dead from exhaustion and I don’t see any signs it’s getting better anytime soon. Is this related to that psychic bullshit or are these homegrown nightmares, because if it’s just bad dreams we might be able to get something to deal with that. Your body won’t run much longer without rest.”  
  
“Drugs? To make it harder to wake up from his nightmares?” Dean snorted and crumpled his wrapper up. “Doesn’t sound like much of a solution to me.”  
  
“Which neatly avoids my actual question,” Bobby snapped.  
  
Sam picked at half of his biscuit. “We don’t know. I don’t usually have visions when I’m sleeping.”  
  
Bobby caught the sidelong glance between the brothers before Sam turned back to his food. His eyes narrowed in annoyance. “I think I’ve been pretty accepting of a lot of crap from you guys. So cut the bull and just tell me what the hell is going on,” Bobby growled at them. “You weren’t having nightmares when I picked you up from Illchester after that mess with Lilith, and you weren’t having nightmares for the first few weeks after Dean showed back up. You had... what, two?- visions in the daytime that didn’t seem to go anywhere. You said Missouri told you it might just be random crap strained out of the _whatever_. Excuse me if I find it a little odd that now out of nowhere you can barely close your eyes before you scream yourself, and me, awake!”  
  
“Three,” Sam muttered. “I had three visions.”  
  
Bobby shot him a scathing look. “Well, hell. That changes everything.”  
  
“Generally,” Dean chucked his wrapper into the trashcan, “the only psychic _whatever_ Sam has had going on when he’s been asleep was when he was chatting with his pen pal in Hell.”  
  
“The so-called angel,” Bobby grunted.  
  
“Yeah,” Dean agreed. “But those weren’t really visions, that was the angel trying to be helpful and Sam being psychic made him easier to reach. Real visions just _happen_. They give him headaches. Talking to the angel gives him headaches too, but neither one of them have ever caused anything like these nightmares.”  
  
Bobby could remember at least one time chatting with the angel had given Sam a lot more than a headache, but exceptions proved the rules and he only nodded and looked at Sam. “So you’ve never had a vision while you were asleep?”  
  
“Just one. When we were looking for the spell ingredients to move the door to Lucifer’s cage. It didn’t seem significant.”  
  
“Does it seem significant now?” Bobby asked dryly.  
  
“Not really.” Sam sank back in his chair and rubbed at his eyes.  
  
“And you don’t remember _anything_?”  
  
Sam shook his head.  
  
“And still no idea what it is you’re saying?”  
  
“No,” Dean said in disgust. “He yells the same thing every night and it’s just a bunch of garbled syllables as far as I can tell. We’ve looked it up and asked around -- nothing.”  
  
Bobby frowned at Sam. “Have you _tried_ contacting that angel thing again? Not that I’m real eager to have you trying to contact something in _Hell_ , but maybe it knows what’s going on.”  
  
Dean scowled. “He’s not in any more danger trying to contact the angels in Hell than he would be trying to contact the ones in Heaven. Less, probably -- the angels up above seem a little confused and unreliable on the subject of Sam. We’ve been over this, Bobby! Hell isn’t evil, Heaven isn’t good. That’s just labels and crap advertising.”  
  
“You keep saying that, but I’m not sure I’m buying,” Bobby snorted. “You might be a tame lion, but I’ve met plenty of other demons who don’t fit into this blissful image of the afterlife you’re selling.”  
  
Dean’s eyes narrowed in marginal irritation. “Heaven and Hell are just labels for the polar Planes of Creation and Entropy--”  
  
“--Order and Chaos,” Sam mumbled, face buried in his arms again.  
  
“Yeah, Sam. Good input.” Dean rolled his eyes. “Human souls are drawn to one or the other after death, neither of them is bad, you just... rejoin the whole. Little drops of water falling back into the pond. Hell gets a bad rap because Lucifer carved the Rendering out of the top layer of the Entropic Plane to give his groupies a little processing plant where they get to strain all the souls bound for Entropy and warp and twist them into being just as bad as their captors. Like a recruitment drive, but with scalpels. It’s not _Hell_ that’s the problem, it’s the fucking Rendering demons. And if we can figure out a way to spring the angels of Hell from the trap Lucifer tricked them into, they can set things back right. No more Rendering, no more demons. Everyone goes home happy.”  
  
“The other demons won’t be,” Bobby said dryly.  
  
“They won’t be unhappy.” Dean’s smile was colder than Bobby had ever seen on his living face. “What they will be is stripped of power and tossed back in the soup like they should have been when they died in the first place, so nobody cares how they feel.”  
  
Sam twisted what was left of his biscuit up in the wrapper, ignoring the look Dean leveled on him. “You said those aren’t the only demons in Hell.”  
  
“Right,” Dean agreed with exaggerated patience. “But like I told you, the Entropic demons don’t give a rat’s ass about the Material Plane. This place is a mix of both polarities, and the demons of either Entropy or Creation would just be pain-maddened and unhappy here. They have zero interest in this place.”  
  
Bobby got up and pulled a carton of juice out of the fridge. “We’re getting a little off track, not that this isn’t interesting too. But we’re working on Sam’s problem right now.”  
  
“This whole Hell thing kind of is my problem, since Dean and I are signed up to somehow spring the angels trapped in the Pit.” Sam cast his brother an annoyed look.  
  
“Hey!” Dean defended himself. “I only agreed to do that in exchange for their help getting, you know, _out of Hell_ , so I could come back up here and save your ass. Oh yeah, and everyone else on the planet’s ass as well. Plus, I offered to cut you completely free after we kicked the crap out of Lilith. You’re the one that insisted this was an us thing now and you wanted to come along on my next big adventure.”  
  
“Well it’s not like I can actually go that far from you, Dean! I have this little problem, remember?”  
  
“The voices in your head?” Dean raised an eyebrow.  
  
Sam gave him a withering look and took a sip of the juice Bobby set in front of him.  
  
“Ah,” Dean smirked. “You mean your uncontrollable lust for my hot body.”  
  
Sam choked on his juice and Bobby cleared his throat loudly. “That’s really not a subject I need to hear anymore about. _Ever_. And also _not_ what we were discussing.”  
  
“It’s not your _body_ ,” Sam hissed when he could speak again. “It’s your blood, and it’s a freaking _curse_ , Dean!”  
  
“ _Hey_.” Bobby glared at them both, though it was doubtful they noticed since they were busy glaring at each other. “Enough about that already. That’s not the problem at hand; your sanity is a little more important at the moment than whatever other crap is looming in the future. Have you tried, I dunno, meditation or something?”  
  
Sam broke his attention away from Dean to find his coffee cup, swallowed the last of that and then looked hopefully around for more. “I’ve tried everything we can think of and nothing is making a dent. I can’t even tell you if it’s the same nightmare, because I don’t remember a damn thing about it.”  
  
“Then what’s the plan?” Bobby demanded.  
  
Sam shrugged and peeled some of the paper label absently from his cup.  
  
Dean swallowed half of his remaining coffee and set what was left in front of Sam before answering for both of them. “Keep our fingers crossed and hope it goes away.”  
  
“Yeah.” Bobby stood up from the table and pulled his jacket off the back of his chair in disgust. “You boys let me know how that goes for you.” He glanced at Dean. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours; maybe you can come up with something to make him sleep in the meantime.”  
  
After Bobby was gone and the rumble of his truck had faded from hearing, Sam tossed what was left of his food into the trashcan and headed back to the stairs. Dean trailed in his wake.  
  
He followed Sam into the guest bedroom and leaned against the wall while Sam toed off his shoes and sank onto the edge of the mattress.  
  
“Taking a nap?”  
  
Sam nodded mutely.  
  
“Gonna be able to sleep?”  
  
“I’ll let you know after I try.” Sam’s eyes narrowed. “And what the hell was that downstairs with shoving the curse under Bobby’s nose like that?!”  
  
“Hey,” Dean’s shrug was easy, “you’re the one talking about your little _problem_ ; I just said what we were all already filling in.”  
  
“I _really_ don’t think Bobby has ever considered you, me and the phrase ‘uncontrollable lust’ in the same general idea before. So thanks for making his morning special.”  
  
“Oh please,” Dean snorted, sinking onto the mattress beside Sam. “What do you think he left for?”  
  
Sam just blinked at him.  
  
“You need sleep, you don’t feel good, he suddenly has to take off and lets us know we have a few hours alone -- do you need more of a map here, Sam? Because I’m not seeing a lot of comprehension in your eyes.”  
  
“No,” Sam said flatly, sitting up a little straighter, suddenly painfully aware of how close Dean was on the bed. He’d actually been painfully aware of Dean for the last couple of days, but hadn’t got around to doing anything about it yet. The cycle of the curse was not perfectly predictable, but he generally had about three or so weeks before he _had_ to slake his body’s need for the power in Dean’s veins and trade for it his own kind of... release. Lilith’s curse had been meant to bind Sam to Ruby, to tangle them together with chains of sex, blood and power, so that when the time came, he would be able to shatter the last Seal and free Lucifer from his prison.  
  
But she hadn’t taken Dean’s plans into account. Reasonable, since she had sent him to Hell and probably didn’t think he was in much position to do anything. But underestimating the Winchesters hadn’t paid off for a lot of monsters, and Lilith was no exception. Dean had made his bargain and returned, furious and powerful. He had stolen the curse from Ruby and taken its mark upon his own flesh, the unavoidable consequence of which was taking Sam into his bed as well.  
  
Or on the carpet, or in the Impala, or just about anywhere else.  
  
It was that kind of curse.  
  
To say Sam was unhappy about it was an understatement, but they had won in the end. And to have averted the Apocalypse and gained some small measure of revenge for what had been done to their family... Sam couldn’t weigh that against the twisted bonds forged between himself and his brother and not be satisfied with the balance. No matter how irritating Dean could be about the whole thing or how much Sam _didn’t_ want to discuss it in front of Bobby.  
  
“What do you mean _no_?” Dean asked narrowly, crossing creaking floorboards to stand by the bed. “He gave us a window; it will knock your ass out, you’ve dragged this just about out to the point where I force the issue anyway, and you won’t feel like crap when you wake up. What’s the problem?”  
  
“You _know_ what the problem is,” Sam growled. “I don’t want to do that _here_!”  
  
Dean flopped onto his back and crossed his arms over his chest, staring at the ceiling.  
  
“And you wanted to know why I mentioned it in front of Bobby.” It wasn’t a question.  
  
“What does that have to do with anything?!” Sam demanded.  
  
“It’s not a secret what we do together, Sam! He helped you when you were figuring out what to do with Ruby -- you think it somehow escaped his grasp what it meant when she was out of the picture and it was me with the tattoo? I promise you, if it did, it sure didn’t escape him when we brought you back here dying and I had to spill gallons of blood down your throat to keep you alive.”  
  
Sam eyes widened with outrage. “You said you kicked him out for that!”  
  
Dean rolled his eyes. “I needed his help to take care of you. I _did_ kick him out as much as I could, but you were pretty obviously desperate and it was pretty obvious what you were desperate for! You were dying, Sam. He knows it’s a spell, that this isn’t something you would choose. But we’ve been here for almost three months now and except for the night I came back, every couple of weeks when we have to deal with this, you act all weird and insist we sneak off and get a motel room for a few hours. I’m fine with the polyester sheets and thin walls, but if you think Bobby doesn’t know _exactly_ where we’re going and why, you’re kidding yourself.”  
  
“We go out all the time and it’s not for _that_!”  
  
“Yeah,” Dean snorted. “But usually when you tell Bobby we’re going out for awhile you aren’t staring over his shoulder and turning scarlet. I get that this isn’t your ideal situation, but I’m tired of acting like it’s some dirty secret. Bobby knows; he doesn’t care. I _do_ care, so knock off the scandalized virgin act.”  
  
Sam grabbed a pillow from the headboard and shoved it up against the wall, then leaned back until he was lying beside Dean. “It’s not a _dirty secret_ , Dean. I just... this place was the closest thing we had to home. I took my first steps in the downstairs hall, we both learned to fire a gun in the back field, and I think your name is still carved into the side of the desk downstairs from when you first learned to spell it. This place is full of our childhoods, and Dad, and family. I don’t like having sex with you in the same bed we used to tell ghost stories by flashlight under the covers in! It’s not you, or the sex, it’s everything together. Bobby _knowing_ is just icing on the cake.”  
  
Dean thought about that for a few minutes. “Do you have any special attachment to Bobby’s bed? Because that’s just down the hall...”  
  
Sam elbowed him hard in the ribs. Dean elbowed back, but more good naturedly.  
  
“Maybe we should think about leaving.”  
  
Sam turned to look at him, surprised. “Why? Because every few weeks or so I get a little uncomfortable here?”  
  
Dean shrugged. “A lot of reasons. You might be less of a prima donna if we’re not squatting with a family friend; Bobby can start sleeping through the night again--”  
  
“Bobby isn’t sleeping because I’m screaming him awake in the middle of the night, not because he has a demon living under his roof,” Sam interrupted.  
  
Dean rolled his eyes. “I _meant_ you’re waking him up in the middle of the night. You think Bobby still has issues with me?”  
  
“You know he does. I mean... you _do_ know that, right?” Sam was suddenly unsure. The demon Dean had been when they had first hit the road together wouldn’t have cared what Bobby thought about him, but he had changed and Sam didn’t always know just how far those changes went.  
  
“Chill, Sam. He’s been a heck of a lot more _understanding_ than I ever would have thought he’d be. Just because he keeps a flask of holy water on his belt and a consecrated blade in his boot doesn’t mean we can’t get along.”  
  
“Right.” Sam still sounded dubious and Dean’s smile was a little more genuine.  
  
“There’s just really no reason for us to stay. We’ve been through everything here, the internet is universal, we have phones, and anything else can be mailed to us wherever we go as easily as it can be shipped here. Or we can just go get it. It’s freaking cold in this state, and since we aren’t making a lot of progress on the research front, I mean... this may take years, Sam. _Decades_ even. Do you really want to be living with Bobby when you’re old and creaky? If _you’re_ old and creaky, just think about how _Bobby_ will be. I don’t know about you, but I’m not up for bedpan duty.”  
  
“That’s real charitable of you, Dean. Glad to know you’ve considered all of the angles.” Sam was still having trouble contemplating a future where he _lived_ to grow old; worrying about the details was still a ways off.  
  
“Seriously, Sam. We aren’t getting anywhere; we can’t even find a reference to Entropy or angels in Hell, much less anything about the barrier or how to free them. This could be the rest of your life. Do you really want to spend it in Bobby’s guest bedroom?” Seeing indecision in Sam’s face, Dean pressed on. “There’s another thought too, you know. Maybe your nightmares are just the stress of everything finally catching up. You start to unwind a little now that that bitch Lilith is off our case, and it’s just all falling on your head at once. I know you like Bobby, but this place is kind of tied to a lot of that crap. You need a change of scenery.”  
  
“I like how you think you can sit here and tell me what _I need_ , Dean.”  
  
Dean shrugged. “Moving out sounds like win/win/win to me. Bobby wins by getting us out of his house, you win by maybe sleeping better, and I win by having to put up with less whining and sneaking around. Not having Bobby staring holes in my back would be a good thing too.”  
  
“Let me think about it.”  
  
“Isn’t that your way of saying ‘Sure, but I’m going to punish you for thinking of it first by making my agreement as painfully long and drawn out as possible’?”  
  
Sam glared but refrained from arguing, the tracery of veins visible on the inside of Dean’s arm catching his eye. He _was_ exhausted, his head was killing him, and he could feel the fine tremors of withdrawal running through his body. Bobby was out of the house, and his other protests seemed... uncompelling with Dean lying warm and willing not even an arm’s length away. It was tempting to insist on a motel room just to be annoying, but not really worth the inconvenience.  
  
“No guarantee if we do this I’ll sleep afterwards. It’s still exhausting, but not an automatic light’s out anymore, you know. Not since...”  
  
“Since Illchester.” Sensing capitulation, Dean relaxed into the mattress. The cyclical tie between them could be a chancy thing and Dean was never entirely certain which way Sam would go when it came time to bend to its dictates. Right after a power exchange, Sam’s emotional state would blaze between them like a neon light at ten feet, but then it would fade and shift into a more physical awareness. Dean imagined it had been cast that way so Ruby could manipulate Sam better without letting the withdrawal go so far he might actually die, but there was no way to know; it could have just been a screw-up. The people who might have an answer were the kind of people they needed to avoid and the knowledge wouldn’t change anything. The curse was what it was. Besides, the effect was more subtle since they had destroyed Lilith’s plans -- another of the strange new differences in the unconventional bond they shared.  
  
“Do you think Lilith affected it somehow when she tried to take it?” Sam asked.  
  
Dean grimaced, those harrowing minutes when Lilith had him trapped in the spell circle and tried to flay the curse off of him so she could take Sam had been the equivalent of anything he had experienced in the Rendering, before he had broken the first Seal and angelic whispers drew him deeper into the darkness of Hell. But the circle had been broken in the nick of time and she had failed. Such an utter, complete failure that even these months later an involuntary smile crept over his lips as he relived it.  
  
“Dean?”  
  
Dean turned his head to face Sam again. His brother really did look awful, pale with circles under his eyes that were so dark he almost looked like he had been punched. “I don’t think she affected anything, Sam. She tried to mess with it and fell on her face.”  
  
“You and Ruby both said I would get stronger, maybe that’s why I don’t pass out anymore when we finish,” Sam mused.  
  
“‘Stronger’ meaning you can take and store more demonic power; it shouldn’t change how the spell actually functions, though. I mean, I can’t imagine why it would.”  
  
“So then why are things different?” Sam demanded.  
  
“Are they?” Dean reached out and traced a finger over the skin of Sam’s waist where his shirt had ridden up. Sam shivered and tensed but didn’t try to move away. “Maybe you’re just less stressed and things feel different. And you are getting more used to... other talents. Maybe that’s messing up your perception. Let’s get this over with, and then you can rest.” He swept his hand up under Sam’s shirt until he could rest his palm over his brother’s heart.  
  
“I don’t want to dream anymore,” Sam confessed in a low voice.  
  
Dean pulled his hand free and shifted until he could look down at his brother. “I’ll stay right here, Sam. The first sound, the first twitch, I’ll wake you up.”  
  
The look in Dean’s eyes was completely serious and Sam found himself nodding. “Okay. Just... okay.”  
  
He had barely finished speaking before Dean rolled off the bed entirely and went to rummage in his duffle bag. Three months and neither one of them had taken over so much as a drawer. Old habits.  
  
Sam kicked his jeans and boxers off and pulled his shirt over his head with quick, economical movements. He had pushed it rather late this time, and the more strung out he was, the less control he had over himself after the bleeding stopped. He _needed_ Dean to touch him, needed that touch and that pleasure so much that ripping his clothes beyond repair was a poor second to getting them off. Easier, then, just to start off naked in the first place. He hated shopping for clothes.  
  
Dean was back a moment later, the familiar, silvery blade in one hand. He sat back down on the edge of the mattress and cut deeply into his wrist. Sam was sealing his mouth over the wound even as blood welled to the surface. Dean waited until he was sure Sam was completely absorbed in the thrall of the spell, then ghosted his free hand over his brother’s dark hair

 

** Chapter Two **

The Eastern world, it is exploding  
Violence flarin', bullets loadin'  
                                                     ~Eve Of Destruction, Barry McGuire

Dean scowled and tore his attention away from the in-store display television he had been watching. Sam was standing behind him, holding up two different bottles of cheap shampoo. Dean pointed at one randomly then turned back to the screen with its serious-looking reporter and pictures of unhappy people milling about. He was still watching it five minutes later when Sam returned, holding a half-full handbasket of groceries.  
“What’s so interesting?”  
  
Dean took the shopping basket, scowled at the toothpaste Sam had picked out, and dropped in a box of Cheese-Its. “They think there might be a few thousand people missing out in Asia.”  
  
Sam looked a little taken-aback. “Just... missing? A _few thousand_?”  
  
“Nomadic tribes,” Dean answered absently, eyes glued to the screen again. “It took people awhile to notice because they moved around and no one ever reported it. But I guess there was some kind of seasonal gathering and only about half the guests showed up, so they started looking and found zilch.”  
  
Sam did some quick computations in his head about seasons and geography. “Maybe it was a bad winter and they froze to death.”  
  
“These are people who have lived out there for generations, Sam. I might buy a few getting taken by surprise and turning up with the melt, but a few _thousand_? With no survivors to report it?”  
  
“What’s your hypothesis then?” Sam asked as Dean lost interest in the report and they headed for the front to check-out.  
  
“Maybe it was the world’s biggest sink hole,” Dean suggested.  
  
“Yeah, Dean. Because _that’s_ something the locals would have missed. What about a demon?”  
  
Dean was quiet for a few minutes, then shrugged. “Sure. A few working together could probably have managed something like that. More powerful ones might even be able to gain control over a group, kind of like a mass brainwashing. I just don’t see _why_. Getting to this Plane isn’t easy without a gate like the one in Wyoming. You either have to work really, really hard for _centuries_ , or hitch your wagon to a major player who can drag you across. The minor pests couldn’t have managed it, and the big problems aren’t as interested in being here as people seem to think. In Hell they have power, and followers, and as much pain and degradation as they can stand. Here... well, without an agenda like the one that brought Lilith and ol’ Yellow Eyes sniffing around there isn’t much to attract them. Sure, they don’t have to compete for victims and space like they do down below, but you can only kill so many people before you start attracting attention. Plus you can only torture them so much before they die and you have to stop to find another victim. Then some hunter comes along and spoils the fun. It’s a lot of aggravation just to get your ass deported.”  
  
“But it still could have been a couple of the lesser ones?”  
  
“Yeah, but they are even less interested in getting caught than the serious threats are. The nuisances come up here to get away from stronger demons, and they don’t exactly get along with each other. Trust is in short supply in Hell. I can’t imagine a group of them working together long enough to kill several _thousand_ people. I would look for some local boogeyman that got disturbed out of a couple of centuries of snooze and needed to fill its belly.”  
  
Sam drummed his fingers on the door thoughtfully. “Pastor Jim said once that demons could get power from hurting people. Could they have been raising power for something?”  
  
Dean grimaced.  
  
Sam recalled sharply that Dean’s information came firsthand; it made him suddenly less interested in the answer. “Never mind, I’m sure there are local hunters looking into it if they think it’s something. What are we doing for dinner?”  
  
“Anything involving a bun and about half a pound of grilled cattle.”  
  
Sam groaned. “We bought soup; what about we have that instead?”  
  
“What about we don’t.” They spent enough time in research and quiet that Dean insisted on eating out most nights, drawing energy from the variety and bustle of the crowds. Sam could almost feel his arteries hardening just from the air in the places Dean preferred.  
  
“Can we at least try and find a place with a salad bar this time?”  
  
“Salad bar, fern bar, nacho bar, whatever. As long as they do burgers too. What about that place on Tanner Street we passed yesterday? They advertised burgers.”  
  
“That would be a _biker_ bar, Dean. I want something to eat that didn’t get run through a slaughterhouse first, not to play pool with drunks.”  
  
“You must have been a lot of fun in college, Sam. I can’t believe you got a girl like Jessica to date you. She must have been taking pity on your sorry ass, trying to save you from a life that would make a monk cry.”  
  
They were still arguing about it when they walked together into the house they had rented just a few streets off the student ghetto, an area where a constant revolving door of tenants ensured that nothing short of an explosion would stand out as odd. Dean had secured a six-month no-questions-asked lease by agreeing to pay in cash and up front. The landlord just seemed happy they weren’t in a fraternity and in the two months since they moved in hadn’t so much as knocked on the door.  
  
Leaving Bobby’s had turned out to be a good thing; though Sam would pull his own fingernails out before he mentioned that to Dean. But in the privacy of his own thoughts he admitted to himself that out on the road again he felt... lighter. Like he had left some of the smothering weight of his past and his future in the dusty corners of the salvage yard. It helped that the early spring days had been mild and sunny. With the windows rolled down on the Impala and Dean’s mix tapes rolling out tunes Sam had first learned in the more carefree days of his childhood, it was almost peaceful. Dean was still a demon, other denizens of Hell would probably stand in line for a chance to takes pieces out of either of them, and they were facing a task that neither one of them had a clue how to begin. But on the open road with no immediate pressure, those things seemed far away for awhile.  
  
They had drifted southwards, tracking down a few of the visions Sam had had since Illchester, but none of them panned out to anything. An empty field, a grocery store, a burned out car. Nothing Sam had seen in the visions had indicated anything special about them, and nothing they could find once they were tracked down had seemed important either. The visions themselves had an oddly flat feel, like still pictures with no depth. Before the showdown with Lilith, all of Sam’s visions had come charged with a sense of urgency and foreboding. But these new ones were just... empty.  
  
“It’s like Missouri told you,” Dean had argued around a mouthful of lunch one afternoon in another anonymous truck-stop diner. “You’ve got this ability, and it doesn’t go away just because you aren’t actively using it. It took you for-freaking-ever to get it turned on right in the first place, and you barely know what the hell you’re doing with it, so you probably suck at finding the off switch. The visions are just random crap floating around out there.”  
  
Sam had leaned in to retort. “I’m not _trying_ to shut it down, Dean! I’m trying to focus in on getting information about our little angel problem. You know, the one we’ve come up completely blank on so far?!”  
  
“And getting old cars and dead grass?” Dean had raised a dubious eyebrow then turned his attention to flagging down a waitress to get a dessert menu. “I think you need to reset your dial. Maybe start with something simpler. Why don’t you concentrate and see if you can find us the tastiest apple pie in all of Oklahoma?”  
  
Sam had studied him suspiciously, but all he’d been able to see in Dean’s eyes was shining sincerity. He’d groaned and given up.  
  
Out on the road, even his nightmares had eventually faded away. Not instantly, there were a couple of bad nights, but by the end of the third week he was sleeping more and screaming less and then soon it was as if he had never had them at all.  
  
But without any place specific to be, the endless driving was just taking up time that could be put to better use, and they settled on Lubbock, Texas, as a place to put down roots for awhile. Half a year was as long as either of them felt was safe to stay in one place, even with the university and the transient nature of the population helping to mask them. Sam spent days on the phone or buried in the computer teasing out obscure leads, exchanging information with contacts he had made over the seven years he had hidden himself away from the world. He spent hours sunk deep in meditation, trying to feel the edges of the aura he had constructed with Missouri’s guidance months ago, trying to weave his needs into the elusive fabric, desperate for any information he could gather.  
  
Sam also took a lot of long walks.  
  
For his own part, Dean spent time with his car, or seeking his own leads. He wasn’t having any more luck than Sam was. Frankly, Sam was pleased Dean was spending so much time in the yard. If Sam’s outlook had improved by hitting the road, Dean’s had seemed to grow more... erratic. Dean’s personality hadn’t always been the most comfortable, and becoming a demon had definitely put an edge on his sarcasm and humor, but now there was a new indefinable something that made Sam uneasy. Nothing he could actually call his brother on, just a sort of restless undercurrent, a look in his eye sometimes that reminded him that while Dean might be his brother, he was also still a _demon_.  
  
Knowing that the search for clues might take years was different than enduring the search, and Sam was starting to give serious thought to starting his consulting business up again. It would give him more contacts and access to more information in barter, and after weeks of domesticity the consistent failure to turn over any leads was taking its toll on Sam’s nerves. That living with Dean was like living with a two-year-old in some respects was just adding fuel to the fire. They didn’t have a lot, a few pots and pans, some glasses and a cheap dinnerware set was all, but it still seemed like every time Sam walked into the kitchen what little they did have was scattered all over the counters no matter how carefully Sam had stacked things away in drawers and cabinets. His favorite was when instead of drug out and scattered, everything was still neatly tucked away -- in the wrong places. Dean’s only response when Sam called him on it was a shrug and a topic change. It was like he was _trying_ to drive Sam crazy.  
  
One afternoon when Sam was slamming things back into their proper places, -- _again_ , he heard the squeak of the floor and spun only to be met by Dean shoving a pair of sneakers into his chest. “It’s a beautiful day; go for a run.”  
  
“You aren’t _Dad_ ,” Sam snapped, shoving the shoes away.  
  
“You’re right.” Dean shoved back and Sam staggered, his brother’s smile tight and unamused. “I’m _not_ Dad, which is how you know I’m being completely honest when I say if you don’t go burn off some of this anxiety, I will beat you like a drum.”  
  
“I just don’t understand how you can be so _cavalier_ about this, Dean! We aren’t getting _anywhere_. At this rate, the only way we will free the angels is if we trip and actually land on the damn barrier. It’s _your_ soul on the chopping block! The angels got you out of the Rendering, and they sent you back to... here. I’m grateful, I really am. But I’m going to be less grateful if this little thing they want in exchange turns out to be completely freaking impossible! And as a penalty for failure, I would think after what you went through, you would be taking the possibility of eternal torment at the hands of frustrated angels a little more seriously too!”  
  
Dean crossed his arms, sneakers dangling from one hand. “I told you, human souls can’t be prevented from descending into Entropy if they choose it. The souls stuck in the Rendering are there because they believe the lies the demons tell them, that it gets worse the further they fall. So they linger there until they are as damaged and twisted and demonic as their captors. If they would let go, they would be free. You don’t need to worry about me.”  
  
Sam gave him a truly scathing look, complete with narrowed eyes and twitching jaw muscle. “Gee, Dean. And if I was stupid, that would comfort me. It’s like you think I can’t put two and two together. I remember when you told me that the first time, you said _demons_ couldn’t hold a human soul out of the Rendering. You said no deal with a demon would hold weight against the pull of Creation or Entropy if the soul was unwilling to be held. But I didn’t hear you say a damn thing about _angels_ and agreements with them! Since you know about how the Rendering works, and they told you in the first place, I don’t think they would have made the penalty for not holding up your end of the deal something you could wriggle out of on a whim!”  
  
“Are you finished?” Dean asked once Sam ran out of steam. Sam nodded shortly.  
  
“First of all, that’s the penalty if I fail, but no one set a timer. They’ve been trapped for... ever really, as far as we’re concerned. There’s no clock counting down seconds, and no axe over my head. I’ve got decades, even centuries to work on this thing. As long as I am on this Plane and free to act, I haven’t failed. So get your panties untwisted and stop flipping out. Besides, you haven’t agreed to anything. When you kick the bucket you’ll be free to go wherever you’re supposed to. I hope you remember my little tips about what to do if you go sailing off into Entropy, but other than that nothing about this deal affects you. This isn’t your problem, Sam. I appreciate you’re trying to be helpful and all, but wearing yourself out and exploding isn’t really the kind of help I need.”  
  
Sam stared at him for a moment, then ripped his sneakers from Dean’s grasp, pulled them on and bent to tie them with short, angry motions. When he stood up, he looked Dean straight in the eye.  
  
“The biggest difference between you before you died and when you came back is crap like that. _Not my problem?!_ Ignoring the fact that freeing the angels would save a whole lot of other people from a virtual eternity of torture, the idea that I wouldn’t do _anything_ to save _you_ from that kind of fate... Fuck you, Dean. And stop screwing with the kitchen!” Sam slammed out of the house before Dean could respond, and didn’t know if he was relieved or depressed when Dean didn’t try to follow him.

 

** Chapter Three **

there's a tremor growing in our own backyard  
fear in our heads, fear in our hearts  
prophets in the graveyard  
                                              ~Jonas and Ezekial, Indigo Girls

Working on carburetors had never been Dean’s favorite part of playing mechanic, but with the rain pouring down outside in sheets it seemed like an ideal time to try and clean his. It wasn’t like a little grease was going to detract from the battered surface of the secondhand table Sam had dragged in. The mismatched rolly chairs salvaged from various curbs were surprisingly comfortable and it was easy to lose track of time as he worked.  
  
Or it would have been, if Sam hadn’t been seated on the cheap linoleum floor in front of the television they had picked up from a resale shop, flipping channels almost before the picture had even resolved. The flickering light kept catching Dean’s eye and distracting him. He kind of liked it, actually, but it wasn’t helping him get the carburetor cleaned.  
  
Sam hadn’t been in a great mood lately, but Dean hadn’t really been in the sort of mood himself to deal with it. He just felt... itchy, and a little out of touch. Like his skin was too tight, and things were a little out of synch. There didn’t seem to be any reason, so he chalked it up to cabin fever and tried to ignore his desire to add a little more chaos to their lives. Sam claimed to maybe be getting a better grip on his mental mojo, and Dean didn’t want to upend anything if there was a chance of a breakthrough. Stupid things were annoying him, though, like the rhythmic click of the remote as Sam flipped through channels. He was just about to throw the pepper shaker at his brother when Sam finally paused on one. The screen was full of flickering orange but Sam had the volume down so low it was a strain even for Dean’s sharpened hearing.  
  
“What is that?”  
  
“The river’s burning,” Sam answered without pulling his gaze away from the screen.  
  
“Not something you hear every day.” Dean looked back down to the carburetor in his hands. “Maybe they will take that owl more seriously next time.”  
  
Sam turned his head enough for Dean to see his profile. “Owl?”  
  
“Yeah, you know -- from when we were kids. ‘Give a hoot, don’t pollute.’”  
  
Sam turned back to the television. “The river's not polluted like that. It’s just... burning.”  
  
Dean frowned. “Where is this?”  
  
“Idaho.”  
  
“Anything else weird going on up there?”  
  
Sam flipped the channel as the news report turned to commercial. “Not that they mentioned. I haven’t really seen anything on the internet lately either.”  
  
“Water doesn’t just burn, Sam.”  
  
Sam didn’t dignify that with a response, continuing to click through channels that flared as bright splashes of color before stuttering sharply into a new pattern.  
  
“Did you suddenly develop ADD over there? I like to channel surf as much as the next--” Dean bit his words off abruptly as Sam dropped the remote with a clatter of plastic and buried his face in his hands, shoulders hunched with pain.  
  
Dean watched expressionlessly; there wasn’t anything he could do for Sam, but he was waiting with aspirin and water when his brother finally straightened back up. Sam took the offerings with a muttered thanks and downed them.  
  
“Roadtrip?” was all Dean asked after giving Sam a couple of minutes to recover, trying to stifle his own glee at the prospect. Sitting around got _old_ \-- that had always been in his nature even before Hell and its transformations.  
  
Sam started to nod and winced at the movement, face still pinched with pain. “It doesn’t look any more interesting than the other ones, though.”  
  
Dean shrugged and offered a hand to pull him to his feet. “We’ve sat on our asses long enough. Maybe taking a few days for a trip will loosen up our creative juices.”  
  
“I don’t think it’s a creativity problem, Dean. I just don’t think there is anything out there to find. _No one_ has ever heard of Creation, or Entropy, or angels trapped in Hell. There’s just... _nothing._ ”  
  
“No time limit, Sam,” Dean reminded him. “It’s out there; we’ll find it. Or I will, eventually. Though since this might take, ah, the rest of your life... is there anything else you want to do for awhile?”  
  
“Yes,” Sam grumbled. “I want to find out what the hell these visions are about. Getting my head split open for some random atmospheric discharge is getting old. If it really is random, I want it to _stop_ , and if it isn’t... then what the hell already?! They don’t seem to mean _anything!_ ”  
  
Dean slapped him on the back and grabbed the carburetor off the table to get the Impala put back together. “Think positive; maybe this one will have some nice, juicy corpses or a horde of zombies attached!”  
  
Sam groaned and went to pack.

  
~~~~~

 

  “This is not how I wanted to see New Orleans,” Sam remarked half a day later, trailing Dean through the filthy ruins of a dockside warehouse.  
  
Dean shined the flashlight into Sam’s eyes. Sam recoiled and scowled as his night vision was destroyed.  
  
“I don’t see squat here. Are you sure this is the right address?”  
  
“I don’t get addresses, Dean. I get blurry images and freaking headaches. Abandoned warehouse, busted lock, wharf, boxes-”  
  
“Rats,” Dean supplied helpfully, flipping one away with his boot.  
  
“Yes,” Sam agreed, his voice still laced with annoyance. “And that sign.” He motioned off towards the front of the building where the Sea King Supplies sign was rusting on the wall.  
  
Dean noted the tension in his brother’s face and voice; his headache had been unusually persistent, and Dean doubted anything but a handful of pills and twelve hours of sleep would even begin to dent it this time. There was another option that would take care of the problem quicker, but a filthy warehouse in the dead of night was not the place. Dean would have been okay with it, but he was pretty sure Sam would raise some strenuous objections. He sighed and handed over the flashlight.  
  
Sam fumbled to grab it, surprised. “What are you doing?”  
  
“Going with a less traditional method; it’ll be faster. Stay right here until I get back.”  
  
Sam shifted uneasily, as he did anytime Dean’s inhuman nature came up. But he said nothing as his brother vanished into the enveloping blackness of the warehouse’s cavernous depths.  
  
Ten minutes later, Sam whirled at footsteps behind him, hoping it was Dean giving warning of his approach..  
  
“We’re leaving. Now,” Dean announced. He took the flashlight and clicked it off before wrapping one hand around Sam’s bicep in the total blackness.  
  
“What’s going on?” Sam demanded.  
  
“Bad mojo. No more talking,” Dean said tightly.  
  
Sam stayed silent, doing his best to walk quietly as Dean dragged him back to the Impala. Dean made no sound at his side. If not for his grip, Sam wouldn’t have known he was there, a shadow against the black and completely at home within it.  
  
Once back in the car, the inhumanity melted out of Dean’s frame and he relaxed into the seat, Sam’s brother again, and not a creature from his nightmares.  
  
“What was that about?” Sam asked quietly.  
  
Dean blew out a breath and merged into traffic, the warehouse district finally behind them.  
  
“Someone’s been working rituals in the upstairs of that place. Bad rituals. The kind that attracts nasty little pests to feed off the emanations. Couldn’t be sure none of them were still hanging around, couldn’t be sure if they were that none of them were bright enough to tattle on us. Congratulations, Sam; you finally found something interesting. Not, you know, _useful_ , but a step in the right direction.”  
  
Sam ignored the dig and frowned. “Recent rituals?”  
  
“Didn’t look like it. The residue still coating the site was enough to satisfy the bone pickers, not enough to attract my attention, though. I didn’t even notice until I was almost on top of it.” Dean drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, considering. “I’d say it’s at least six months or so old.”  
  
“Why would I be having visions of a warehouse where someone did a ritual half a year ago?” Sam asked, baffled and annoyed. Dean said nothing and Sam gave his profile a suspicious look. Dean’s expression was blank, but not an honest blank; it was the kind of blank he looked when he didn’t want Sam to see something in his face. It had been a regular expression of Dean’s throughout their childhood, before Sam learned what their father really did during the endless days and nights they waited in motels and back bedrooms across the country. “There’s something bothering you.”  
  
“What’s _bothering_ me is that we drove thirteen hours to get here, and it’s going to be thirteen hours back. For no fucking reason.” He stomped the pedal with uncharacteristic roughness and Sam’s eyes narrowed.  
  
“If you’re tired, I can drive.”  
  
“I’m not _tired_ , Sam! I’m just...”  
  
“Dean.”  
  
Dean swore, but gave in. “I recognized the ritual, okay? I recognized it, but I don’t know what it means. I haven’t got any answers for you, Sam. I have no idea why you would have a vision of this, but it seemed smarter to just kill the lights and haul ass instead of hanging around to see if whatever did that came back.”  
  
“If you recognized it, then you have to know what it’s for. Let’s start there.”  
  
Dean visibly hesitated, glancing over at Sam and then back to the road. Sam felt unease coiling again in his belly. Dean had always been a straightforward sort of guy for the most part, and becoming a demon had made him even more brutally so in some respects. To see him openly hedging like this was disquieting.  
  
“It’s a ritual to... enhance suffering.”  
  
Sam turned his own gaze to the windshield and considered that.  
  
“I don’t understand,” he finally said.  
  
“To drag out their suffering when you kill them. Make it sharper, better. It’s a torture ritual. Get it now?” Dean eyes didn’t leave the road this time. Sam knew because he was staring at him again.  
  
“Someone was tortured to death in there?” Sam wanted to make sure he understood.  
  
Dean nodded.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Who knows? Probably just because. Demons like pain; you know that. It’s like a drug to some of them. The more a victim suffers, the more the demon likes it.”  
  
“Was the person still there -- the body?”  
  
Dean shook his head and for a few minutes the only sound in the car was the rumble of the highway beneath the wheels.  
  
“Why did you recognize that ritual, Dean?” Sam finally asked in a low voice, not at all sure he wanted to know.  
  
Dean’s smile was tight. “Just _ask_ , Sam.”  
  
“Fine.” Against the door where Dean couldn't see, Sam’s fingers were clenched around the edge of his seat. “Have _you_ used that ritual?”  
  
“What could that possibly change at this point?”  
  
“I just asked you a question, Dean! I’m not picking a fight. You’re obviously familiar with it; I just wanted to know _how_.”  
  
“Which is bullshit and practically an accusation!”  
  
Sam felt his nails sink into the thick leather of the seat. “I wasn’t _accusing_ you of anything. But a vision brought us here, so we should probably try and figure out why this was important. If it was important. You obviously have more information than I do, so excuse me for trying to get you to share!”  
  
Sam’s stomach chose that moment to protest not having been filled for hours and the conversation was sidetracked into a debate on what was available at the next exit. By the time Sam had stuffed the last greasy wrapper back into the paper bag, Dean had the music cranked up high enough to make conversation hard and Sam resigned himself to pursuing the topic later. He could think of better things to do than pick a fight with a demon in the close confines of a car. Sam settled in to try and sleep, determined to pick the topic back up on more favorable ground, but Dean surprised him by abruptly shutting the music off.  
  
“Dean?”  
  
“I’ve never used the ritual, Sam. But you only have to see something carved into your own skin a few hundred times to get it really burned into your memory, you know?”  
  
Sam swallowed, nausea twisting the food he’d just eaten into an uncomfortable knot in his belly. Dean never spoke about his time in Hell, and Sam had only ever managed to make himself ask the once. For his own sake, he would have had recounted every second of pain his brother had endured for him, a pale attempt at understanding just how much he owed for the time Dean had suffered for saving Sam’s life. But he didn’t think it would be a kindness to Dean, so he let it lie.  
  
“Nothing to say?” Dean asked sardonically when Sam remained silent.  
  
“That... answers my question. But you seemed... upset.” There was a horrible awkwardness to the entire conversation and he knew that Dean was letting him twist on purpose, but he pressed on anyway.  
  
“You don’t think having it used on me time and time again while I was ripped and torn into screaming hunks of flesh, just to be instantly healed so it could start all over again, is enough to maybe make me a little _upset_ to run into it again?”  
  
“Is it?”  
  
Dean snorted. “No. That was just the tip of the iceberg. I’d be about as upset to run into a knife I’d accidentally cut my finger with on this Plane.”  
  
Sam sighed. “How excruciating are you going to make this for me?”  
  
“There isn’t much to tell, Sam. It’s a ritual of the Rendering, almost any demon there could cast it with a little time and a victim. But these kinds of things aren’t so easy here in this world. It would take an unusually powerful demon to get any use out of it here.”  
  
“Powerful like Lilith?”  
  
“Lilith is a bit of a special case; she’s got a,” Dean made a hand gesture, looking for the right words, “ _grand destiny_ , and a lot of her power is bound to that purpose. She’s powerful, but there are others who are more dangerous.”  
  
“But there aren’t many like that here, right?”  
  
“There weren’t, and this is about half a year old. About the time we were having our little fling up in Illchester. I mean, like I told you, there really isn’t a whole lot up here to keep the attention of powerful demons. In the Pit, they have a captive audience and rule as lords of however much domain they can claim. Here...” Dean gave a kind of half shrug. “Here there are all manner of indignities they have to tolerate. If Lucifer had risen, it would be a different story, but things being what they are, I would have expected most of the partygoers to have gone home. Not be hanging out in warehouses.”  
  
Sam frowned. “I find your use of the phrase ‘would have’ ominous.”  
  
“The ritual doesn’t tell us anything but that six months ago, a demon of some significance was amusing itself here. Maybe it’s a warning.”  
  
“Or maybe the world, or _whatever_ , is just downloading random crap into my head.” Sam looked resigned.  
  
“Hey,” Dean shrugged, “it worked out pretty well for us before. If the world wants to whisper sweet nothings to you now that the big event is over, it’s only polite to listen. Eventually it should get around to what we want to know. Get some sleep if you can.”  
  
Sam agreed with Dean’s estimation of events; the warehouse was the first vision they had tracked down that actually related to anything of interest, but as horrible as what had happened there was, proof that a demon had been in the area months ago wasn’t exactly something that would get anyone excited. He leaned back against the door and tried to fit the visions together into some kind of picture that would tell him what it was he was supposed to be learning from them, but nothing coherent would form.  
  
His eyes flew open when Dean steered the Impala off the interstate. “Stopping again?”  
  
“Gas is almost a quarter cheaper.”  
  
Sam eyed the gauge reading a half empty tank. “Money’s not exactly a big issue, Dean.” And it wasn’t, they still had plenty of funds left over from Sam selling off half the spoils of their father’s hunting eight years earlier.  
  
“It’s the principle of the thing. Besides, if money’s not an issue then how come everything you drag into the house either comes from the curb or from a thrift store?”  
  
"Habit," Sam shrugged. Dean mimicked the gesture then rolled his eyes and climbed out.  
  
He scanned the parking lot while drumming his fingers on the roof and waiting for the pump to shut off. It wasn’t a great part of town, and half the people wandering around looked like they might have had a bit much to drink, but he wasn’t detecting any particular threats. Not that he expected any, but it was always the one you didn’t expect that stabbed you in the back. Or stabbed your brother in the back. Against the brick wall of the decrepit strip mall an emaciated man in ragged, filthy clothes was drinking from a brown paper bag and gesturing wildly at passersby. There was something odd about his aura, but there was something odd about a lot of people’s auras and it didn’t really hold Dean’s attention until something the man yelled caught his ear. It wasn’t in English, but it was very familiar. A quick glance into the car showed Sam was reading a paperback he’d picked up somewhere by the gas station lights. Dean rapped on the glass. Sam rolled it down a crack.  
  
“What?”  
  
“You want anything from inside?”  
  
Both of Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “We just ate.”  
  
“ _You_ just ate, I want a corndog. Back in a few.”  
  
Sam rolled his eyes, but when Dean glanced back from the gas station door, his brother was engrossed in his book again. Dean ate his corndog and wandered closer to the man who was shouting at new targets.  
  
“What does that mean?” Dean interrupted.  
  
The man turned to Dean with no expression of surprise and smiled. “Well met! Have you come to hear the good news?”  
  
“I came to find out if you had a clue what you’re yelling about,” Dean said impatiently. “Do you?”  
  
“The end of the world, my brother. Sit beside me while I tell you about the end, when we shall all drown in a lake of fire!”  
  
“Thanks.” Dean cut the man off before he could work himself back up. “I think I’ve seen that vacation spot. It was nice, got a tan.”  
  
The man shook his head at Dean’s flippant tone and repeated the phrase that had caught Dean’s attention.  
  
“What does that mean?” Dean asked again.  
  
“They are coming.”  
  
Dean felt a great stillness, remembering hearing Sam scream the same phrase while he wrestled in nightmares that had barely been willing to release him. “ _Who_ is coming?”  
  
“They are. Everyone knows it that has ears to hear.” The man tugged at his own grimy example. “It’s been in the air for months. A great darkness that everyone had better be gettin’ prepared for.” The bum’s attention drifted from Dean as a pair of girls in stiletto heels and skirts so short Dean was surprised they weren’t flashing panties, if they were wearing them at all, staggered by on the sidewalk. “Time waits for no man!” the man railed at the girls, who gave him a startled look and teetered off as fast as they could.  
  
The man shook his head. Dean kinda had to agree. He appreciated the girls’ efforts, but wearing shoes you couldn’t run in was asking to be eaten by something.  
  
“Tasty treats.”  
  
Dean looked at the man sharply, the comment uncomfortably close to his own thoughts, but the man wasn’t even looking at him.  
  
“Dean?” Sam called his name from where he was standing beside the Impala, looking concerned.  
  
Dean ate the last bite of his corndog and tossed the stick into a trashcan by the curb.  
  
“Gotta go,” he told the man. He recognized the twist to the man’s aura for what it was now, and knew getting information from the hopelessly mad was a futile effort. He only hoped the insanity had caused the man’s channeling of _whatever_ , and not the other way around.  
  
“That’s the _old_ news, though,” the man called as Dean started to walk away. “Don’t you want to hear the latest?”  
  
Dean turned to hear the old man spout off another garbled line that meant nothing to his ears.  
  
“And what does _that_ mean?” he asked impatiently.  
  
The man smiled broader, with a dark sparkle in his eyes and showing a mouth that was missing more than a few teeth.  
  
“They are here.”

  
~~~~~

 

  “What was that all about?” Sam asked when Dean slid back into his seat behind the wheel of the Impala.  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
“You stopped to have a private chat with a bum because you... what? Wanted to know where he got his awesome threads?”  
  
But Dean didn’t rise to the bait. His expression remained pensive as his attention focused on the road.  
  
“Dean?’  
  
“It’s nothing, Sam. Just drop it.”

 

** Chapter Four **

Hands, like secrets, are the hardest thing to keep from you  
Lines and phrases, like knives, your words can cut me through.  
                                                    ~ Dismantle Repair, Anberlin

Sam stirred uneasily in his sleep. They had been back from New Orleans for weeks and there had been no more visions. His dreams had been unquiet again lately, but nothing like the screaming nightmares of months ago. He wasn’t getting anything, useful or not. Dark circles under his eyes and the lethargy that weighed him down attested to his restlessness. He was suspicious that it was yet another facet of his unknown abilities starting to manifest, but wasn’t certain. God knew he had experienced enough to provide lifetimes of bad dreams, but this just… felt different. In the way that he _felt_ other things no normal human could. It hadn’t reached the point he felt the need to confess anything to Dean, but his brother definitely knew something was up.  
  
Sam sighed and opened his eyes in the darkness of the bedroom. His bedroom. In the house he shared with Dean. He didn’t know how long he could keep Dean entertained in the dusty flatlands of North Central Texas, but he settled for enjoying the peace while it lasted. The idea of having a _house_ that wasn’t also a prison was still a novel one to Sam and he was happy every time he opened his eyes to see the same patch of badly popcorned ceiling overhead. Dean had been even more moody and closed off since they had returned from investigating Sam’s last vision, but he refused to talk and Sam was frankly tired of arguing with him.  
  
They shared a bed --when Dean used a bed at all-- both on the nights the curse pulled them together, and other times. While he was still able to appreciate the attractiveness of other people, Sam’s body took no notice of anyone but Dean, just as it had taken no notice of anyone but Ruby before. Not that it still took a _lot_ of notice of Dean outside of the curse. Sam had been entirely enthusiastic about Ruby, but she had had a lot going for her in that she was the right shape and _not a sibling_. Things were what they were, though, and he seemed to be slowly adjusting. Resigned to the situation, Sam was trying to make it into something more… comfortable, for himself at least. Dean had never seemed especially fazed in the first place. Though like he had said, after Hell, what was incest?  
  
Sometimes Sam wondered if things would be easier if Dean were a girl, but not enough to encourage Dean to possess one to find out.  
  
Sam was trying to learn to touch Dean more casually, to think of and see him as his lover, and not the older sibling he had both worshipped and resented for most of his life. Mostly worshipped, but the seven years he had spent in exile had given Sam plenty of time for introspection, and he had been forced to admit to himself that however much pain and upset he had inflicted on Dean during the tumultuous years of his adolescence, there had been a tiny part of him that had enjoyed it. Felt that Dean deserved it for always being the obedient son, the good son, their father’s perfect little soldier. Sam wondered what their dad would think of them now. If he would be proud of what they had overcome and accomplished… or if he would shoot them both as monsters without a trace of recognition in his eyes.  
  
Dean was in the bed with him now. He hadn’t been there when Sam fell asleep, but Sam wasn’t surprised to find him there. As his sleep grew increasingly troubled, he woke up to Dean’s presence more often than not. The bed wasn’t very wide; Sam yawned and slid one arm around Dean’s bare waist where the t-shirt he wore had ridden up. The instant he made contact, Sam’s eyes flew wide, all sleep forgotten. He pulled his hand back as if burned and kicked out, shoving Dean onto the floor.  
  
The demon managed to move fast enough to land in a crouch as Sam grabbed the silver knife off the nightstand at the head of the bed and slid out of the tangle of sheets to stand facing the demon in his brother’s skin.  
  
“Sam?”  
  
“Stay back!”  
  
“What’s going on?” the demon asked, eyeing the blade warily.  
  
Sam laughed, and it sounded a bit wild. “Did you think I wouldn’t know?!”  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I think maybe you’re still dreaming, Sammy.” The demon stepped back and hit the light switch.  
  
In the light that flared, the situation was even more bizarre; there was nothing Sam could see that marked the man standing across from him as different from the brother he had known all his life. But he was different -- _it_ was different-- Sam could feel that in the air, crawling over his skin. It wasn’t Dean. He _knew_ what Dean should feel like and tried to reach out to him with their link. It wasn’t something he had practiced much and he bitterly regretted being so focused on visions that he had neglected to work with other aspects of what he could do. All his desperate seeking returned to him was an indecipherable wash like nails on a chalkboard, icy and alien. He cried out in pain and fell to his knees.  
  
“Shut _up!_ ” Sam yelled over his brother’s frantic voice when he’d recovered enough to breathe, drowning fear with fury. The demon had taken a step towards him when he fell, but the look on Sam’s face held it frozen in place. “Only my brother gets to call me that. I don’t know what the hell you are, but you aren’t him.”  
  
“Sam, I’m exactly who I’ve always been. I don’t know what’s going on, but you’re messed up. Just…” It raked both hands through its hair in frustration. “…just don’t do anything stupid--”  
  
Sam flung out one arm and _reached_ for the demonic essence of the creature facing him, squeezing his eyes shut in concentration. For one quick moment, he felt his power bite -- but before he could clench down and try to force answers from it, there seemed to be some kind of _shift_ and he closed his metaphysical fingers on empty air.  
  
His eyes flew open in shock. He stared, and for a moment, he thought the creature’s eyes weren’t the vivid green of his brother’s, or even the impenetrable black of a demon’s, but rather some other shade entirely. It looked away sharply, and when it turned back, the eyes were simply green again and the expression on his brother’s face was one of strained calm.  
  
“Sam. We can talk about this.”  
  
“No. No!” Sam backed to the closet door and reached blindly inside for the bag he kept packed in case they had to leave in a hurry. He found the strap and pulled it up over his shoulder. The worn sweatpants and t-shirt he had been sleeping in wouldn’t attract attention on the street, and the couple hundred dollars in cash stashed in the bag would keep him on his feet until he could come up with a plan. Sam kept backing out of the bedroom door into the main room and towards the front door. The demon, or _whatever_ , followed him slowly, its hands spread and palms flat.  
  
“I don’t know what’s going through your head, or how I can make you believe me, but I’m Dean. Whatever you think is going on, you’re wrong; I swear, Sam.”  
  
“Shut up,” Sam spat again, twisting the locks and finding the handle blindly, refusing to take his eyes off of the creature.  
  
“Do you think if I was really some new monster or body thief I couldn’t easily take that butter knife away from you and just do whatever the hell I want?”  
  
Sam’s expression of determination didn’t change. “If you follow me, I swear I’ll kill you.”  
  
“Sam!” The thing in his brother’s flesh threw up its arms in exasperation.  
  
Sam slipped backwards through the front door and out onto the street. It was three in the morning and deadly quiet in the neighborhood. In the front room of the house, a lamp switched on. Silhouetted in front of it, Sam could see his brother’s form, standing with arms crossed. It could only have done that to assure Sam of where it was, that it wasn’t chasing after him. Sam walked hastily away, glancing over his shoulder constantly to make sure that dark figure was still there. When he was far enough away that he could no longer distinguish it, he ran.

  
~~~~~

 

  “Bobby?”  
  
“Sam! Where the hell are you, boy?”  
  
“It called.”  
  
“If by ‘it’ you mean your brother -- then yeah, he called. Said you’d gone completely mad and wanted to know if I’d heard from you.”  
  
“I’m sure it did.”  
  
“What’s going on, Sam?”  
  
“I don’t know. I don’t know, Bobby! He was Dean when I went to bed, and it wasn’t Dean when I woke up.”  
  
There was quiet on the other end of the line for a moment.  
  
“Are you sure, Sam?”  
  
“I don’t make a habit of fleeing from my home in the middle of the night. So yeah, Bobby, I’m sure. You don’t believe me? What did it tell you?”  
  
“Calm down, Sam. First things first. Are you safe?”  
  
“I’m… in a public location. A few states away.”  
  
“Good. Can I be someone you call in the first few hours next time you take off in the middle of the night running for your life, instead of one of the twenty-four hours later calls? I've got enough ulcers from your family. I thought this crap was all over!”  
  
“Bobby.”  
  
“Of course I believe you, Sam! He’s a demon, I’ll always take your side when it’s a question of honesty or your freedom. And I didn’t tell him a damn thing; I didn’t know anything to tell!”  
  
“It.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“It. You called it ‘him.’ I don’t know what it is, but it’s not my brother.”  
  
“Sam…”  
  
“It isn’t, Bobby!”  
  
“Fine. Why don’t you start over and tell me what happened?”  
  
“What did it say happened?”  
  
Bobby sighed. “ _It_ called me, said it was resting on the bed with you asleep, then you kicked it onto the floor, started yelling how it wasn’t your brother, grabbed a panic bag and ran away wearing your pajamas. _It_ said it didn’t try to grab or chase you because it thought that would only make things worse.”  
  
“It forgot the part when I tried to use my power on it and it just _slid_ out of my grip. Ruby wasn’t able to do that, _no_ demon I have ever encountered could do that. Not since I was first learning, not unless I was already exhausted. I don’t know what it is, Bobby. But it wasn’t Dean.”  
  
“He sounded really concerned, Sam.”  
  
“It only called you to find out where I am.”  
  
“He didn’t ask me that.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“He never asked me where you were. The only thing he wanted to know was if you were okay.” Bobby let the silence sit for a moment before continuing. “Do you want to come here?”  
  
“No! It obviously knows that I would contact you; it can probably guess that I might go up there. It must have access to Dean’s memories or something.”  
  
“Or it might just actually _be_ Dean and he’s doing exactly what anyone would do in his position.”  
  
“It isn’t Dean!”  
  
“Why are you so certain? Have you used your power at all against demons in months? You said yourself you felt like some things were changing after that whole thing with Lilith. Maybe you just messed up, maybe it doesn’t work the way it used to. Maybe your brother is sitting in a cheap apartment in Texas flipping out because he thinks you’ve gone completely insane and are dead in a ditch!”  
  
“He didn’t feel right, Bobby.” Sam’s voice was almost a whisper.  
  
“Okay, let’s try this a different way -- how long do you have?”  
  
“Until what?”  
  
“Until--” Bobby’s voice was incredulous. “Get with the program, Sam. Until you and _your brother_ have to spend a little quality time together to keep you alive -- that’s what!”  
  
“Maybe two weeks, probably a little less. I can go longer, but that’s when I’m going to start breaking down.”  
  
“How much less?” Bobby asked suspiciously.  
  
“I don’t know. Like you said, I haven’t really been mixing it up with demons lately. I don’t know how much what I did tonight took off the clock.”  
  
Bobby cursed. “Can I call you back at this number?”  
  
“What are you going to do?”  
  
“I don’t know, Sam. I think I need to call him back, though.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
“Information? Even if what you say is true, and it lies, at least that’s something. I won’t tell him anything, Sam. Can I reach you here?”  
  
“No. But I’ll call you later. Thanks, Bobby.”

  
~~~~~

 

  “Well?”  
  
“I don’t have a whole lot more to tell you, Sam. What do you know about the tattoo?”  
  
“The one with the curse?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Not a lot.”  
  
“Would it be possible for anyone _other_ than Dean to have it?”  
  
“No.” Sam thought furiously. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, maybe, but they would need to have the actual curse tied to them. Ruby had it, and when Dean took the curse from her, it showed up on him. When he possesses other people, it shows up on them.”  
  
“I’m not going to ask how you know about that last part,” Bobby growled.  
  
Sam ignored that. “All this means is that I can prove it’s not Dean.”  
  
“He says he has it.”  
  
“No, it doesn’t,” Sam said flatly.  
  
“He says he does, Sam. Could you tell if it’s a fake?”  
  
Sam remembered hours spent tracing fingers over the thin black lines of the strangely compelling design. Loops and whirls tingling under his fingers. First on Ruby, then on Dean. Even one time on a stranger in the arid heat of a New Mexico summer.  
  
“I think so. But even if he had it, that just means he managed what Dean did: he stole it.” Sam felt his throat tighten up. Dean might actually be gone. He had been trying to convince himself that if he just waited, Dean would show back up, somehow, and they could solve the problem together. But if the stranger had the tattoo…  
  
“Wouldn’t you have felt that?” Bobby asked dubiously.  
  
“I didn’t when he took it from Ruby in the first place.”  
  
“You have less than two weeks to make a decision on this. He says he has the tattoo, so that means that _whatever_ is in that body, you need them to live. He swears he’s Dean; he knows things only Dean should know. You say that nothing unusual happened that night that you know of, and that your power isn’t dependable. All of this is based off of a _weird feeling_ you had, and I’m telling you, whatever is calling me from Dean’s body is doing a damn good job acting the part of a worried brother. He hasn’t asked me where you are, Sam.”  
  
“Because it knows I’ll have to come to it eventually.”  
  
“Sam! This doesn’t make any sense! It could have had you that night. What’s the purpose here?”  
  
“Did it say anything else?” Sam asked, sounding defeated.  
  
“Yeah,” Bobby sighed. “He said to tell you that you have ten days to come back on your own, and then he’ll do things his way. What are you going to do, Sam?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
Eight days later, shortly after sunset, there was a cautious knock on a battered Texas door. After a few minutes, a lock turned and the door opened.  
  
“You knock now?” the thing that looked like his brother asked levelly.  
  
“I didn’t have my keys. Are you going to let me in?”  
  
It stepped back silently. Sam drew a deep breath and walked inside. He looked around. It seemed strange that everything would be exactly the way he remembered when he felt like the world had flipped over in the past week. Even the soft hum of the air conditioner under the rhythmic song of outside crickets felt routine.  
  
When he turned around, it was pulling off its shirt.  
  
“That’s a little premature,” Sam said coolly.  
  
The smile was thin. “I thought you might want to do some verification.”  
  
Sam’s eyes dropped to its waist, where the thin black lines of the tattoo on its hip were visible over the edge of frayed denim.  
  
“Don’t touch me,” Sam muttered, sliding his duffle from his shoulder and stepping in closer.  
  
It responded by leaning back against the kitchen counter, spreading its arms out and wrapping its fingers around the edge.  
  
Sam hesitated, then reached out to touch the design. Right before he made contact, the demon interrupted him.  
  
“You could see the whole thing if I lost some more clothes.”  
  
“I can see plenty,” Sam growled. “Hold still.”  
  
He brushed his fingers over the tattoo and didn’t know if he should be horrified or relieved when the familiar tingle sparked in his fingertips. The tattoo was real.  
  
Sam staggered back. The demon stepped towards him, one hand outstretched.  
  
“Sam…” it began.  
  
Sam was shaking his head to stop the words. “You aren’t Dean.”  
  
“I am, Sam,” it insisted with somewhat strained gentleness. “I swear.”  
  
“I know what I felt!”  
  
“Try again.” It held its ground but didn’t move any closer.  
  
Sam crossed his arms over his chest and glared. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you? For me to actively try and open my mind to you?”  
  
It dropped its arm and ran a finger over the tattoo, drawing Sam’s eyes back to it.  
  
“If I really wanted in your mind, Sam --more than I already am-- I’m pretty sure I could do it without your permission.”  
  
“Is that a threat?” Sam demanded.  
  
“It’s a reminder that I’m playing this entire situation much nicer than I could be. I don’t know what you sensed that night; I still think you had a freaking nightmare and lost your mind. But whatever, I’m asking you to _look again._ ”  
  
Sam didn’t say anything, indecision obvious in his eyes. After a minute or two, the demon just shook its head a little and grabbed its shirt off the counter.  
  
“I’m going to go lay down. You need to make up your mind how this is going to play out. You want to settle this peacefully, you know where to find me. You want to turn it into a fight, there’s the door. But you know where I stand on this; you put your life in danger, I’m going to come after you.”  
  
“I thought it was my choice now. I thought after Ilchester that it was my life to do what I wanted with, including dying. That’s what my _brother_ said,” Sam hissed.  
  
“I said that, and I’ll stick to it if I have to. But not like this, Sam. You don’t get to make that choice when as far as I can tell you’ve gone flipping nuts. Our _deal_ doesn’t include temporary mental illness.”  
  
“We never discussed that in the deal.”  
  
“Sounds like an oversight on your part.”  
  
It pulled the door halfway closed behind itself after it entered the bedroom. A moment later, Sam could hear the squeak of mattress springs. He tried to let some of the tension out of his shoulders, but they still ached with the stress of coiled muscle.  
  
“Fuck it,” Sam muttered and went into the kitchen cabinet to see what they had to drink. The higher the proof, the better.

  
~~~~~

 

  A while later, having braced his nerves with nothing harder than water, Sam pushed open the door and forced himself to enter the room.  
  
The moon was high and light filtering in through the blinds striped the floor, the bed and the figure on it. Jeans were lying in a heap by the door and Sam knew it was naked under the thin sheets. He was still afraid to try and touch its mind again, but he had to know. Bobby couldn’t come up with a different plan that would give them any information they didn’t already have, and while Bobby wouldn’t say it, Sam knew he believed the demon when it claimed it was Dean. All of its movements, all of its words -- they were Dean’s. Against that, all Sam had was a bone-deep certainty that it was _different_. That what he had touched that night wasn’t the same brother he had known his entire life, even in his post-Hell incarnation.  
  
The figure on the bed lay still, eyes closed, under his scrutiny. Sam knew it wasn’t asleep, but he appreciated the facade of privacy. Whether it was Dean or not, both of them understood where the evening was heading.  
  
He knelt by the edge of the bed and pulled the sheet down until he could see the entire tattoo. He drew a deep breath and laid his hand over it; the design fit completely under his palm, telltale tingling immediately setting in. Not unpleasant, just unmistakable. It still felt authentic to him. Sam stared down at it in the shadows until his gaze was distracted by the angle of the hip at his fingertips. He suddenly wondered what would happen if he laid a blade in the hollow there and pressed, if he followed the thin spill of blood with his mouth into the soft thatch of hair just under the edge of the sheet…  
  
Sam made a small sound and wrenched his gaze away. He left his hand pressed against warm skin. It occurred to him he could feel more than the tingling in his palm, he could also feel a heartbeat. That heartbeat, that mimicry of life that Dean maintained for him. To make it that much easier for Sam to pretend.  
  
Sam closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He slid his hand from the hip, over the muscles of the belly, across the ribs, until it rested over the heart. Now his hand touched the dark ink of the anti-possession tattoo they had gotten together more than a decade earlier, after Sam had spent a week possessed by the demon Meg. His fingers covered the weal that broke it.  
  
The only marks on Dean’s flesh were there because of Sam. He thought there might be something poetic about that, but it would be the bad poetry -- Goth, maybe Emo, written by suicides and adored by teenagers. He knew what Dean would say if Sam told him his body was like Emo poetry. At the least, it would probably involve a possession check and a lot of yelling. Sam would give a lot to hear that yelling. He cursed himself for a coward and reached out again with his mind...  
  
Moments later, Sam let out a shuddering breath and fought back tears.  
  
“Dean…”  
  
“I told you, Sam.” Dean propped himself up on one elbow and reached out with the other arm.  
  
“You had to say that.” Sam leaned in and wrapped his arms around his brother, burying his face in his shoulder.  
  
“I really, _really_ , did. You have no fucking idea what this week has been like. Would it have killed you to tell Bobby where you were?” Dean pulled him in close and leaned back again, dragging Sam up. Sam pulled free to get up from his knees and kick his shoes off.  
  
“I was afraid it actually might,” Sam muttered.  
  
He shed the rest of his clothes and slid under the sheets next to Dean. One fumbling hand through the rails of the headboard found the knife in usual spot. Dean lay beside him, seemingly content with whatever Sam wanted to do now that he was sure Sam wasn’t going to run. It was a change in how things usually went between them, but Sam was still too overwhelmed with relief to bother with his usual distance.  
  
He pressed the edge of the blade over Dean’s collarbone, dragging down hard and sharp, then tossed it to the floor and licked the spilling blood off his brother’s chest before finding the wound itself with his tongue. But Dean was only content to lay complacent for so long, and after a few minutes the cut healed with the speed of thought and the encounter changed into something more frantic. Grasping hands and teeth that closed on his skin just enough to add to the bright ache Sam could feel building with every second that passed.  
  
Before it could overwhelm him, something _snapped_ in his mind and then he was falling into a spiraling, rushing darkness that stung his eyes and ears with a cacophony of noise and feelings he couldn't begin to make sense of. Amidst the madness, he could still feel another body wrapped around his, awareness of his own flesh like something disconnected from his mind. Then orgasm rolled over him and he lost track of everything in a confused scramble of physical sensation.  
  
When he came back to himself, the world wasn’t spinning and Sam shoved free of Dean in a panic. The bare wood of the uneven floorboards as he scooted away dug splinters into his skin, but hardly registered. He stopped when his back hit the wall and looked around wildly, uncertain where he even was.  
  
It took him a good minute to realize he was still in his bedroom.  
  
Paint flaked off the wall where his shoulders pressed against it and the warped floor looked like it was a century old. Most of the popcorn had fallen from the slanted ceiling and it seemed oddly bare in the bright moonlight coming in through the naked windows, blinds lying in a cordless heap below the remains of the ledge. The clothes they had piled beside the bed were disintegrated to rags and the bed itself was just... gone. Dean was sprawled like a corpse on his side in a pile of dust, loose springs and a few pitted bits of metal around him -- the remains of the mattress, bed fastenings and dresser hardware. The silver blade they used for their private ritual was black under what looked like decades of tarnish.  
  
Fuck.  
  
Sam’s heart was pounding, but before he could force himself to do... _something_ , Dean stirred. He sat up slowly, dust clinging to his skin like ashes. He didn’t look upset, or confused, or _anything_ familiar.  
  
“Dean,” Sam whispered.  
  
Dean turned his head until he was meeting Sam’s gaze and Sam froze. His brother’s eyes weren’t green, and they weren’t black either. Sam remembered the impression he’d had, before, when he was so sure Dean wasn’t Dean anymore: that his eyes were a different color. He’d convinced himself it was a trick of light, and had larger concerns to handle -- but now there was no mistake and no confusion. Dean’s eyes were the same gray as the dust that coated his skin. But deeper, a living color that had nothing of humanity in it. He made a curious head tilt as he regarded Sam, then stood and extended a hand. Sam flinched back and grabbed for the door handle and pulled, but the handle came free in his grasp and the door was warped into place. Before he could just kick it down, he felt a touch against his shoulder blade and spun to face Dean from inches away. Dean’s expression wasn’t so remote anymore, now he looked... troubled. He closed his eyes and staggered, then fell to his knees. Sam was torn between fleeing or trying to help him.  
  
“Sam,” Dean gasped hoarsely.  
  
Sam didn't move an inch. “Dean, are you... okay?”  
  
The word seemed inadequate against what he had felt and the state of the room.  
  
“No. Help me up. Hard to... come back.”  
  
Sam still didn’t move, and after a long moment, Dean looked up wearily, eyes green and expression pained. Sam licked his lips nervously and stared at him.  
  
“Something wrong with your hands, Sam?”  
  
“Look at this room, Dean! I think we’ve had enough touching for one night. What the hell is going on?!”  
  
Dean stood up on his own and rubbed at his eyes. “It’s--”  
  
“If you even think of finishing that sentence with ‘nothing,’ I swear to God, I’ll start swinging.”  
  
“Think you’ve got it in you, Sammy?” Dean asked derisively.  
  
“I’ve had enough crap from you. _Something is wrong_.” He gestured wildly to the room. “And I don’t believe you don’t know what it is.”  
  
Dean looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. “Shit.”  
  
“Yeah. And that’s... When you were touching me, I mean... when I was feeding from you, when we had sex afterwards. It was wrong; it felt _weird_ , Dean. Whatever the hell is happening, it isn’t just about you, okay? We’ve already got more stuff on our plate than we can handle and-- God _damn_ it, Dean! We have been through _too fucking much together_ for you to be keeping secrets like this!”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“That’s it? Just ‘okay’?” Sam demanded.  
  
“You’re right.” Dean shrugged and gestured to the room.  
  
Sam let his fists slowly unclench.  
  
“Can we clean up first?” Dean continued, “Or at least get out of this room, you know, _before_ the floor caves in?”  
  
The fragile-feeling boards beneath his feet were groaning in an alarming manner every time he shifted his weight, and with Dean acting... cooperative, and like _Dean_ , Sam was able to pull his attention back to more practical matters. Like not having this conversation naked, and getting the dirt and stickiness off his skin. He reached for the door again, but it was still stuck fast in its frame. Dean stepped up and laid a hand on the battered white paint. In a heartbeat, the door dissolved into dust, raining down to the floor in silence and leaving an empty frame. Dean stepped wordlessly through and vanished into the bathroom.  
  
Sam felt a cold sweat spring up all over again, swallowed hard and headed for the kitchen where his duffle bag had a change of clothes and he could wash off in the sink. And pick splinters out of his ass.  
  
Ten minutes later, he was sitting on the floor against the wall in the living room, drinking water and waiting for Dean. Whatever had happened in the bedroom had been mostly confined to that area; there were some signs of damage extending into the hallway, but not enough that Sam was worried about structural integrity.  
  
When Dean finally emerged from the bathroom, he was wearing clothes from the laundry basket and his hair stuck up in damp spikes. He headed for the kitchen and started rummaging in the fridge.  
  
“You ready for the big revelation or you want to drag this out some more?” Sam demanded. “Maybe wash the Impala, take a road trip? It’s not like I’m in a hurry or anything. What’s one bedroom? It’s not like we don’t have most of a house left!”  
  
Dean rolled a chair into the living room and settled into it. “Stop being such a drama queen. You want to know what’s going on?” He shrugged, in another lifetime Sam would have said he looked nervous. “I’m a demon, Sam. A real demon.”  
  
Sam blinked, somewhat underwhelmed. “I know that, Dean. That was news... a year ago.”  
  
“Not like Lilith and the rest of the pathetic hold-overs,” Dean explained with exaggerated patience. “I’m the real thing, an Entropic demon. Get it?” He gave Sam an expectant look.  
  
It took a moment for the words to make sense. When they did, Sam was pretty sure that the last thing he did was ‘get it.’ He was starting to get the sinking feeling that no matter how bad he had thought things were, they were so much worse.  
  
“How is that _possible_ , Dean? How can... You said no Entropic demon could exist on this Plane -- that they wouldn’t want to! I don’t understand.”  
  
“That’s, uh, kind of a funny story,” Dean hedged. “They don’t, usually. I mean -- part of becoming one is to kind of have all of what you were scoured away. You... can’t imagine, Sam. There aren’t _words_. It’s just...” Dean’s voice trailed off and he looked far away for a moment with an expression of what Sam could only call longing. Sam felt a different kind of fear spring up.  
  
“Dean?”  
  
“Well,” Dean asked in a voice tinged with impatience, “how did you _think_ I was able to come back so quickly?”  
  
“I thought the angels helped you! You _told_ me the angels helped you come back in exchange for your promising to free them! What part of that says ‘oh, and I’m also an entirely different category of monster, just so you know.’ How could you not tell me this? You deliberately lied to me!”  
  
“I didn’t lie.” The mildly offended tone made Sam wish he had something heavy to throw.  
  
“Dean!”  
  
“What! I didn’t lie, Sam! Everything I told you was complete truth. You’re the one who thought I said something else.”  
  
Sam gritted his teeth. “You flat out told me Entropic demons didn’t exist on this plane. So how about instead of trying to piss me off, you just _tell me_ what the fuck is going on with you!”  
  
Dean crossed his arms. “Fine. You know when I died, I went to the Rendering, right?”  
  
“And you broke the first Seal for the Cage.”  
  
“Right, yeah, good times. So... after that, no one cared so much about me and I just kind of, uh, followed the voices deeper in until I found who was whispering at me.”  
  
“The angel,” Sam said tightly.  
  
“Are you telling this story or am I?” Dean demanded. “Because if you know all of this, I can just shut up and _you_ can talk.”  
  
Sam looked unrepentant and nodded tightly for Dean to go on.  
  
“They couldn’t just _give_ me anything, Sam. They couldn’t presto magic me into a demon, or send me back alive to the world. They have almost no power; it’s taking almost everything they have just to continue existing. Angels, from Heaven or Hell, are guardians; they aren’t really a part of the Entropy or Creation of their domains. So when Lucifer shoved them way down into Entropy and made the barrier so they couldn’t rise again, well, it had the same effect as it had on Lucifer’s followers when the angels dragged them down too. They’ve practically been neutered.”  
  
“I know that part, Dean!”  
  
“Good for you, Sam.” Dean wasn’t looking at him again, though; his gaze was off towards the window.  
  
“So they couldn’t just send you back,” Sam prodded.  
  
“Did I tell you how Entropic demons happen?”  
  
“I don’t remember. If you did, it wasn’t what I was paying the most attention to at the time.”  
  
Dean nodded. “It’s important now. When you die, normally a soul descends and everything about their life just kinda falls away until there is nothing but... peace. It’s the most amazing feeling, like making up for everything bad that ever happened in your life, and you don’t want to do anything but sink deeper, and deeper until... well,” Dean shrugged, “whatever is happening has happened. But that’s most souls, the one’s that make it through the Rendering. Souls that become Entropic demons aren’t willing to just go with the flow, they fight, and if they fight hard enough, instead of being swept into the storm they learn to ride it. They learn to chart their own path through the chaos instead of being gently swept into oblivion. But they don’t have human identities anymore. They don’t remember or care about anything in this Plane. They are totally consumed by their nature.”  
  
“But not you.” Sam frowned. “You came back for... Lilith.”  
  
“I came back for Lilith,” Dean agreed. “And for you,” he added after a moment. “That’s what the angels gave me. They said that they would hold what makes me _Dean Winchester_ if I would descend and fight that battle; if I survived to make the transformation, they would kick me back to the Material Plane with the memory of myself -- and enough wards and filters that I could process this place and act on it like the Rendering demons do.”  
  
“Is that... if your eyes turn that gray color because you’re this other kind of demon, why did they turn black before?”  
  
Dean shrugged. “When in Rome. It’s easier to control what color than stop it from changing at all when things get ... tense.”  
  
“Why didn’t you _tell_ me this in the first place!” Sam growled, angry, scared, and still not certain what everything Dean was explaining meant. “And what the hell does this have to do with what happened in the bedroom? You’ve been like this for over a year now and I didn’t have a clue. Why is now different?!”  
  
“I’m not exactly enjoying this conversation, Sam,” Dean snapped. “I didn’t tell you before because it would have just complicated things and it didn’t matter. You thought I was a demon, I _was_ a demon, and arguing with you about meaningless details wouldn’t have changed anything. And when I first came back to, well, _me_ , I also didn’t really give a damn what you understood as long as you were cooperating. The angels gave me my memories back, but it wasn’t an instant fix, you know? And it wasn’t just a matter of picking my memories back up; I had to learn how to value them too, color them with more emotions than just destructive ones. That took time, and it’s not perfect,” he shrugged, “but it’s as close as anyone who’s been through Hell can come. And then afterwards, when I felt maybe a _little_ guilty... you finally trusted me. We were getting along and things seemed fine. I didn’t want to have _this_ conversation and maybe have you throw some kind of hysterical fit!”  
  
Sam gaped speechless for a moment before exploding. “ _Hysterical fit?!_ The bed _dissolved_ , Dean. The room looks like it belongs in a house two hundred years old. Our clothes look like they came off corpses. I don’t even know what to say about what having sex with you was like; I’m trying not to think about it. I don’t think I’m having a _hysterical fit_ , but if I was, I think maybe it’s a little deserved! You said the angels wrapped you all up so you’re just like the other demons now, but I’ve got to tell you, Dean, I’ve spent way too much time with other demons and I don’t remember any furniture _dissolving_.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s...” Dean looked a little shamefaced. “I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you for a few days now. About this stuff.”  
  
“Now’s good for me, Dean. Is now good for you?” Sam’s expression said pretty clearly that any answer that wasn’t yes would start a fight, a real one rather than the normal bitching.  
  
“Something’s happened in Hell.”  
  
“And you’ve been meaning to mention it for _days?!_ Did it just not come up in conversation? What does that even _mean_ , Dean?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Dean snapped. “But the filters that keep me all fluffy and harmless are... failing. It was slow, really slow at first. I wasn’t even sure what was going on. Things were just irritating, and then I started doing things that just... made messes, that made me feel a little better. But after what happened with you flipping out, and then just now... They’re failing, Sam.”  
  
Sam thought of the kitchen and other things that had made living with Dean fun. Shoes that he tripped over, bookmarks on random pages. He had thought Dean more annoying to live with than he remembered, but chalked it up to the golden haze of memory and the inflexibility of age.  
  
“I tried to reach out to the angel, to see if I could get any clues about what was going on. They want something from me still, so it didn’t make any sense they would be unraveling the very thing that lets me function,” Dean continued. “But there was nothing, like yelling into the wind.”  
  
“I didn’t think you could communicate with it. Wasn’t that why _I_ had to put up with nauseating headaches during our little quest?” Sam growled.  
  
“It’s not that kind of contact.” Dean shrugged. “It’s more of a friendly wave kind of thing. I’m here, you’re here, Hell is a beautiful place. But it didn’t answer. That’s very wrong, Sam. However much our communication sucks, it has a _leash_ on what passes for my _soul_. I should be able to feel it on the other end. Something is seriously screwed up.”  
  
Sam studied Dean’s face for a minute. “That’s not all.”  
  
“No. These disasters, your visions, what you said when you were having nightmares... I think I was wrong.”  
  
“Wrong about _what_ , Dean?” Sam asked ominously.  
  
“The amped up Rendering demons that were here to, I don’t know, hold Lucifer’s cape or suck on his toes, whatever. I might have been wrong when I told you they would have gone back to Hell after we rained on their happy plans. I think they stayed, and... I think maybe there are more now. Maybe we stopped one Apocalypse only to kick off a different one.” Dean’s smile was thin and unhappy. “I think that’s what the World has been trying to show you. I don’t know how the earlier ones play into it yet, but I bet if we do some more digging, those places and things will be connected to demons, or at least really suspicious _accidents_. That ritual at the warehouse wasn’t done by any low level pond scum, and... the timing is just too good. This demonic crap, your visions and the dream warnings all start about the same time my filters start to unravel? The angels of Hell aren’t answering the phone, Sam. Someone’s cut the line.”  
  
Sam slumped back against the wall and considered the conversation. “So... that’s it then? A bunch of unusually powerful demons are running around causing who-knows-what problems for who-knows-what reasons and the angels of Hell have gone missing at the same time. Which can’t be anything good. Oh yeah, and you’re a demon, just not a demon like I thought. Instead, you’re some kind of cosmic force of chaos -- have I got this right so far, Dean?”  
  
“Interesting you should mention that last part.”  
  
Sam groaned and banged his head against the wall. “What _else?_ ”  
  
Dean shrugged. “It’s just that, like you said, I’m kind of a powerful Entropic presence and, um, well, you have to remember that it was the filters the angels set up that let me pretend I wasn’t. Now the filters are collapsing, and if the angels aren’t around anymore...”  
  
“I think you need to be a little clearer, Dean. I think we have some communication problems and I want to be _absolutely_ certain I understand what you’re trying to say.”  
  
Dean met his eyes directly. “I’m saying that if we don’t find some way to fix the filters, and soon, then you won’t have to worry about what the other demons are up to. I won’t be Dean anymore, I’ll be a full-blown Entropic Demon and what I’ll do to this world, there aren’t even words for.”

 

** Chapter Five **

My boy builds coffins with hammers and nails  
He doesn't build ships, he has no use for sails  
He doesn't make tables, dresses or chairs  
He can't carve a whistle cause he just doesn't care  
                                                                 ~My Boy Builds Coffins, Florence and the Machine

Sam was out in the evening’s unseasonable chill. The darkness suited his mood. His arms were wrapped tightly around himself and he scuffed his shoes on the concrete as he walked, taking his anger and frustration out on something that couldn’t hit back.  
  
After Dean’s _last_ little confession, the house had been too small for the both of them and Sam had stormed out with a pointed order to Dean to not move an inch until he got back. He doubted the demon, _his brother_ , would follow that order, but as long as he was giving Sam space, it was good enough.  
  
He made two more angry passes around the block before feeling enough tension loosen in his muscles that he thought he could talk to Dean again without yelling.  
  
Dean was still sitting in the living room when Sam walked back in, just flipping his cell phone closed. “I called Bobby.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
Dean shrugged. “I figured you were gonna insist on telling him anyway and I thought I’d spare you the headache.”  
  
“How did he take it?”  
  
“Still cussing when I hung up. You might want to call him back, later.”  
  
Sam nodded and slumped onto one of the mismatched chairs in the kitchen.  
  
“What are we going to do, Dean?” he asked, feeling exhausted now that the adrenaline was depleted and he could feel the aftereffects of the curse creeping into his muscles. “How bad is this going to get? If you’re a danger to everyone and everything around you... I can’t stay away from you. I’d rather have my throat cut than wait around for the curse to kill me. Is that really what we’re down to?”  
  
“You saw what I did to the bedroom, Sam--”  
  
Sam gave him a withering look.  
  
“--But there isn’t a mark on you,” Dean continued. “The curse, this tie between us, even when I was _other_ for a few minutes, I knew you. I could taste your heartbeat, feel the weight of your soul. I protected you, I _wanted_ to protect you, because I recognized you. It shouldn't be possible; you shouldn’t have any more meaning to me when I’m like that than anything else in this Plane does. But you do. You aren’t in danger from me, Sam. I don’t think,” he added.  
  
“Just everything else in the world is.” Sam rubbed at gritty eyes. “So, what’s going to happen? Do you age things, is that it?”  
  
Dean snorted. “We should be so lucky.”  
  
“Look, Dean. I’m tired. I get that you thrive on chaos, really. I know you can’t help it. But we have so many disasters to handle right now, I don’t even know which way to look first. So please just answer my damn questions so I can pass out in a corner and pretend I’m in the Bahamas for a few hours before I have to actually try and make some kind of plan.”  
  
“Fine. Creation is basically order, structure and stability. Predictability, boring crap like that. Entropy is the opposite. Chaos, confusion, random acts of crazy, and change. Rapid aging is a form of Entropic change that follows the natural order of things here while still screwing with the usual pace of stuff. It’s being nice like that because my aura is still weak and the filters are still pretty strong. As they break down more, things are going to get more... unpredictable.”  
  
“Rain of toads kind of unpredictable?”  
  
Dean grimaced. “Or kittens, or anvils, or asteroids.”  
  
Sam took a deep breath. “What kind of timeframe are we talking about?”  
  
Dean’s expression lost focus for a moment and Sam had the sudden feeling he was sitting in a room with a corpse. Which, of course, he was. He was just about to head back outside to walk off some more of the awful crawling feeling when Dean blinked a few times and refocused.  
  
“Don’t know; hard to say. Episodes like tonight... probably start getting more frequent over the next couple of weeks.”  
  
“How long until we reach the anvil stage?”  
  
Dean’s smile had little humor in it. “Maybe a year. Maybe, at the outside. But I’ll be causing massive amounts of more explainable disturbances long before then. Storms, floods, fires, freaky-ass natural occurrences.”  
  
“Can you try and stay away from populated areas?”  
  
“You still don’t understand, Sam. The only thing I’ll be _trying_ to do is escape this Plane. I’m not going to understand _anything_. This world is only going to be a confusing, nightmarish prison I want to _smash_.”  
  
“But the curse, you’ll still recognize me?”  
  
“Not as my brother, but maybe as something... valued. I can’t believe the curse has held up to _this_ much of my nature, really. Lilith might be a class-A bitch, but she’s one heck of a spellcaster. Earlier in the bedroom, when I was slipping, I tried to escape then, back to Hell. It’s instinctive. But the filters weren’t weak enough for me to slip free. Even if they had been, though, the curse grabbed hold of me like a bear-trap. I wouldn’t ever have given Lilith credit for being able to cast something that would hold a real demon against its will.”  
  
“So even if you were completely subsumed, had no recollection of your agreement with the angels, or me, or anything, and all the filters were gone -- you would still be trapped here?”  
  
“Unless this thing breaks.” Dean shrugged.  
  
“Shit.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Dean rose and walked outside. Sam paced for a few minutes, then finally slumped down against the wall, wracking his brain. Dean walked back in a few minutes later carrying a blanket from the Impala’s trunk; he slid down to sit beside Sam.  
  
“We need answers.” Sam looked hopeful that Dean might have come up with something.  
  
“You need sleep,” Dean replied, tugging at Sam’s sleeve, pulling him down.  
  
“I need the planet not burned to a crisp as a playground for things from Hell,” Sam snapped, shaking Dean off.  
  
“Sam, sleep.” Dean grabbed hold again. “You’ll think better and feel better. I promise I’ll keep thinking about it while you rest. It’s not a crime to be human and alive, but you aren’t going to do anyone any good if you keep slamming your head into a wall because your brain is full of fuzz.”  
  
“You cremated my bed, Dean. Excuse me if I don’t go hop into my pajamas and tuck myself in!”  
  
But Dean was persistent and Sam let himself be coaxed down until his head was pillowed on Dean’s thigh. Dean tossed the blanket over him and reached over his own head to flip the light switch off.  
  
In the darkness, lying on a hard floor surrounded by the familiar scents of the Impala and his brother, Sam felt very young. Transported back to a time when Dean was still alive and could protect him from anything, and the biggest problem in his life was how miserable his father was going to make the school year. Not apocalypses, or atrocities, or angels, or demons.  
  
“Dean,” Sam whispered, his normal voice seeming too loud in the protective cover of night, “what if we can’t fix the filters? You won’t be able to do what you promised.”  
  
“You can do it for me. I have faith in you, Sam. The angels just want to be free; I don’t think they care who does it.” Dean pulled the blanket up a little higher and ran his hand over Sam’s hair, the gentle stroke coaxing Sam even closer to sleep.  
  
Sam’s eyelids were incredibly heavy and he could feel his thoughts trailing off; he fought it back. “But if you’re trapped here, and causing all of that damage--”  
  
“We’ll have to find a way to release me so I can go back to Hell. It’s okay, Sam. I’ll want that.”  
  
Sam struggled to think. “That’s not... If it’s the curse that’s holding you here, we tried to break that before. You said there wasn’t a way. Missouri told me it couldn’t be done. The only way to break it is to kill me. And if I’m dead, there won’t be anyone to free the angels; and if they aren’t free, it will be like you’re in the Rendering, forever.”  
  
“If it’s me or the world, Sam, I want you to choose the world.”  
  
“That isn’t fair, Dean. And the demons would still be here, still be hurting people and destroying things.”  
  
“Go to sleep, Sam.”  
  
“I’d like the house to still be here when I wake up,” Sam mumbled, surrendering.  
  
Dean snorted, the familiarity comforting.  
  
“I’ll do my best.”

  
~~~~~

 

  Sam woke up the next morning feeling like his spine was misaligned from spending the night on the floor, and with a crick in his neck from the awkward angle. Dean had scooted out from under him at some point and one of the threadbare cushions from the kitchen had been shoved under his head. The cushion was from a chair that had been rescued off a curb in the college dump and it was assaulting his nose with a unique kind of... fragrance. Sam grimaced and forced himself up. He didn’t feel really rested, but he at least had a few new ideas to go with the new day.  
  
Dean was humming _When The Levee Breaks_ in the kitchen and Sam tried hard not to read something ominous in the choice.  
  
He climbed to his feet and headed for the bathroom. Sam was just rinsing out his toothbrush when he glanced in the mirror. He didn’t look as old as he felt, but at thirty-five he wasn’t as young as he used to be either. The ache in his back testified to that if nothing else.  
  
He was inspecting a few scattered strands of gray in his hair when his brother found him.  
  
“Need some Clairol?” Dean asked, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed.  
  
“Thanks, but I think the problem is under control,” Sam answered dryly, turning to face him. Dean wasn’t smiling like Sam expected.  
  
“How long has _that_ been happening?” He nodded towards Sam’s head.  
  
“What, my hair? Uh... awhile. It’s just a couple of strands, Dean. I’m getting older, and it’s not like my life has been one of placid calmness, you know? I’ve earned the right to some gray.”  
  
“Whatever.” Dean headed back down the hallway and Sam was left with the impression that his brother had been genuinely upset. He followed after him, intending to address the issues but was distracted by a plate of food shoved into his hands as soon as he walked into the kitchen.  
  
“You cooked?”  
  
“You see anyone else around here wielding a spatula?” Dean was still slamming things around, but Sam was starving and hot food trumped a pointless argument. Scrambled eggs and hash browns dragged out of the freezer weren’t high on Sam’s preferred dining list, but after the turmoil of the past day, he was ravenous.  
  
When he was finished and had eaten every scrap of his own food and half of Dean’s, Sam pushed his plate away and announced firmly. “I have a plan.”

  
~~~~~

 

  “That’s a horrible plan, Sam,” Dean said flatly when Sam was done talking.  
  
“No, it isn’t.”  
  
“ _Horrible_. Didn’t we talk about the angels in Heaven, Sam? I’m pretty sure we talked about them being a no-no, what with their persistent and unreasonable desire to turn you into a smoking grease spot and all.”  
  
“That was only the one,” Sam insisted. “And I want to summon a _specific_ angel. It helped us before.”  
  
“You know how sometimes you can just see the train wreck coming?”  
  
“You mean like the countdown to destruction going on in your head? That train wreck?” Sam glared.  
  
Dean dumped all the dirty dishes in the sink with an air that long familiarity let Sam correctly interpret as an expectation that he would do the washing up.  
  
“If you have a better plan, I am all ears, Dean. We need answers and we need them fast.”  
  
“How fast do you think this is going to be, Sam?! Do _you_ know how to summon an angel? Because I must have missed that lesson somewhere in my education.”  
  
“You let me worry about that. You... concentrate on not leaking your aura on anything I need.” Sam followed Dean’s gaze. “Like my laptop!” Sam snatched it up before Dean could touch it, giving his brother a warning look.  
  
Dean rolled his eyes. “If you’re trying to keep my cooties off of it, you’re already too late. I was on it this morning checking the news.”  
  
“Find anything interesting?” Sam was almost afraid to ask.  
  
“Chicago’s burning.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Burning. Chicago. It’s a big city kinda off to the--”  
  
“I know what Chicago is, Dean! What do you mean _burning?_ ”  
  
Sam could see the flippant answer on the tip of Dean’s tongue, but after a second, he kind of shrugged instead.  
  
“They think it started with a lightning strike. It just... won’t go out.”  
  
Sam tightened his grip on the laptop. “I have work to do.”

 

** Chapter Six **

You’ve got to know when to hold’em,  
Know when to fold’em,  
Know when to walk away,  
Know when to run.  
                                                 ~Kenny Roger, “The Gambler”

A decade’s worth of grime on the westward windows wasn’t enough to stop the reds and golds of sunset from creeping their way across the linoleum of the living room floor. Sam didn’t notice in his pacing, cell phone pressed tight to his ear as he listened to what Bobby had found out.  
  
“Yeah, thanks, Bobby. I got your email a few minutes ago. I think I’m almost ready to try now.” He rolled his eyes. “I know you aren’t happy about it. --No, I don’t really care.”  
  
Another pause and Sam’s eyes narrowed.  
  
“I have to try something! It’s been two weeks now and no one has offered any new solutions or turned up any more information. Dean is getting weaker, or stronger. Whichever it is, it’s not good. I’m running out of options; feel free to jump in with any if you’ve been holding out.”  
  
He nodded impatiently while Bobby spoke.  
  
“Yeah, I understand. Grease spots, bad idea -- I’ve already heard this song and dance. Pretty much daily. You know, I would be a lot happier about you and Dean having private little phone chats if the only purpose didn’t seem to be ganging up on me.”  
  
Another minute passed.  
  
“Well, if it kills me, you won’t have to worry about Dean either.” Sam sighed. “I’m not sleeping on the floor, Bobby. Dean bought me a new mattress. Well, because he cremated my old one. It was more of an apology than I usually get for his crap." There was a pause and Sam nodded. "Yeah, I’ll be in touch.”  
  
“I don’t know how much of an apology it is if we’re using the same bank account,” Dean observed from where he had been sitting at the table eavesdropping.  
  
Sam slipped the phone back into his pocket and looked unimpressed. “The apology part was making you carry it in by yourself.”  
  
Dean rolled his eyes. “We aren’t ganging up on you either.”  
  
“It would be easier to believe that if you weren’t both using the same examples as to why this is a bad idea.”  
  
Dean shrugged. “I didn’t say we weren’t discussing it. But we talk about other things too.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“He has an awesome recipe for gumbo I’m trying to get him to share.”  
  
Sam gave him a withering look and went back to the piles of research littering the kitchen table.  
  
“So how close is close?’ Dean called after him.  
  
“Tomorrow.”  
  
Dean jumped up and dropped the paper he had been reading to the floor, ignoring its suddenly yellowing edges, and followed Sam into the other room. “Tomorrow? _Tomorrow?_ When were you planning on sharing with the class?!”  
  
“As soon as I was sure. Don’t you have things to do?” Sam asked pointedly.  
  
“I don’t like this, Sam.”  
  
“I had no idea, _Dean_. You’ve been so supportive up to now and all.”  
  
Dean glared, then grabbed his wallet off the counter and stormed outside.  
  
“I’m eating out,” he yelled back through the screen.  
  
“Don’t hurry back,” Sam muttered, already getting lost again in the strangely compelling dance of runes and language he knew in his gut would put him on the path to answers.

  
~~~~~

 

  After all of the stress and preparation, the event itself was fairly anticlimactic.  
  
A dilapidated boatshed on the edge of Buffalo Springs Lake outside of Lubbock, two cans of spray-paint, a couple of candles and some holy water was all the company Sam had for his first attempt. He had considered a church, but finding a church abandoned enough to mark up the way he wanted was problematic, and the lake had been a holy spot for centuries. Since he expected some trial and error anyway, Sam had finally decided he might as well start at the site with the least risk and work up from there.  
  
Dean was still unhappy with Sam’s plan, but he had finally been cornered into agreeing it was the best of a small range of options and agreed to stay away while Sam tested his research. Neither one was sure what kind of effect Dean’s aura might have on the complicated delicacy of the summoning Sam was attempting, but it only took Dean’s shrugged admittance that without filters, what he had for a soul was pretty much a direct line to Hell for Sam to firmly ban him from the proceedings. Dean’s version of Hell might lack the vicious trappings of the usual idea, but Sam was still pretty sure he didn’t want to accidentally summon anything out of it.  
  
And Dean could keep his eye-rolls to himself.  
  
A storm was blowing in over the lake by the time Sam was finally ready to start his ritual. The original weathered gray of the shed interior was almost invisible under swirling layers of runes and charms culled from more than a dozen religions. Candle flames that bobbed and flared in the breeze sliding through cracks in the planking and under the poorly attached tin roof didn’t help visibility, but Sam didn’t need to see much now anyway. Daylight was fading fast and dark clouds raced across the sky as he closed the door for the last time, and the first crack of thunder almost drowned out the syllables as Sam began to speak.  
  
His years of occult research and a healthy amount of determination and adrenaline let him see the text he was reciting scrawled in his mind’s eye as clearly as if it was written in front of him, and his tongue slid through half-understood syllables with the ease of a lifetime’s exposure. He could feel power building like a tangible current in the room and was only half surprised when some of the runes began to glow faintly, barely visible against the wan light of the candles. Sam kept his pace, voice firm and strident, drifting from the text he had pieced together as something moved inside of him and brought other words to mind. Wind howled all around and ripped a panel from the roof, letting rain pour in. The candles sputtered out in the sudden downdraft of air and water. Papers lying in the rickety table swirled up with a life of their own, but Sam kept speaking, word after word falling from his lips like he spoke his mother tongue in the land of his ancestors.  
  
Another crash of thunder and the sky stuttered in staccato bursts of light, blinding him as he spoke the last word, its harsh syllable hanging grating in the air.  
  
Blind, drenched and ears still ringing from the last round of thunder, Sam still knew he was no longer alone. He felt a lazy sort of inquiry from Dean through the link between them and sent a hasty burst of _Not Now_. His brother’s interest sharpened but faded obediently into the back of his mind again, and Sam felt satisfied there would be no interruptions from that corner. The connection between them felt almost more sensitive in the wake of the spellcasting, but Sam had more pressing things to do than ponder the curse.  
  
He stood silent in the dark for a full minute. Having not really expected it to work on the first go, he now found himself uncertain what to say. Then the candles flared back to life and Sam, still groping for some kind of greeting, was horrified to hear something Dean would have said spill out of his mouth.  
  
“Don’t you ever change clothes?”  
  
The angel gazed at Sam expressionlessly for a moment, then glanced down at itself before looking back up. Sam found it hard to meet the seemingly depthless blue of its even gaze. There was judgment there, and a kind of implacability that would have made Sam’s skin crawl if the power humming in the air hadn’t already accomplished that. The only thing that gave Sam the self-assurance to press on was a tiny glint he chose to interpret as compassion, or at least interest, and the angel’s helpfulness in the past.  
  
“I am aware human fashions change frequently, but I had not thought so long had passed yet that my current attire would be noteworthy. Should I find something less conspicuous?”  
  
“No. Uh, it’s fine. Really. You just... were wearing it the last time we met too,” Sam finished lamely. Even the loosened tie appeared to be hanging at the same angle.  
  
The angel didn’t respond and seemed to be staring distantly at an unremarkable section of the packed dirt floor. Another cascade of thunder made Sam jump. Castiel blinked slowly and looked back up.  
  
“We have a limited amount of time to talk before this conversation attracts notice. You lie near the heart of matters in which I have been commanded to not interfere. There is little that I can do for you, Sam. But in light of our past... acquaintance, I am willing to hear you out. Once. Speak quickly.”  
  
Sam nodded. “I know about Dean being an Entropic Demon; I’m sure that isn’t news to you.”  
  
“I am aware of his nature.”  
  
“Okay, well, the filters, or wards, or _whatever_ , that make him safe to be here are... collapsing, and we can’t seem to reach the angels in Hell. I don’t know what’s happened, but is there anything you can do to help him?”  
  
“I am sorry, Sam. Even if I would help you, there is nothing I can do alone to repair the filters around your brother. It isn’t one angel in Hell that is assisting him, it is _all_ of them. Granted, they are greatly weakened by their imprisonment, but even so, it is a task no single angel is up to. You are talking about interfering with one of the foundation forces of existence. None of my siblings would aid me in this.”  
  
“They won’t help because Dean is an agent of the Entropic angels?”  
  
“We are guardians of Heaven, not this Plane. My Father commanded that we are not to assist our brethren in Hell to escape the trap their own blindness led them into, or to take up their duties in their absence. When you were engaged in preventing Lucifer’s escape, I had more leeway to act. Lucifer was imprisoned by Divine command, and enforcing his punishment was a subject open to... debate. But there is no true discord in Heaven on this matter.”  
  
Sam raked frustrated fingers through his hair. “Can you at least tell me why this is happening?!”  
  
Castiel inclined his head slightly. “Ages ago, when the angels below realized they had been trapped, they retaliated by pulling the strongest of Lucifer’s followers deep into Entropy with them so that they could not act in their Master’s cause. Followers such as Lilith.”  
  
“I’ve heard this before,” Sam said impatiently.  
  
The angel continued as though he had not been interrupted. “The demons spent much of their time and power finding the door to Lucifer’s Cage and beginning the rituals that would open it, locating and destroying Seals, manipulating the birth of yourself and others like you, battling my own kind. But they also spent an enormous amount of power freeing Lilith from the angels’ hold.”  
  
“Because she was the last Seal on the cage.”  
  
“Correct. But with Lucifer lost to them again, thanks mainly to you and your brother’s intervention, there were a great number of powerful demons that had been anticipating their Master’s rise to power who then found themselves without purpose. Facing the long ordeal all over again, they decided to... try a different tactic. Instead of a slow search from the shadows, they bent the power they had been hoarding to free other powerful demons from the angels’ grip, and then those demons in turn combined to push the barrier holding the angels deeper into Entropy. Their ability to reach this world was already weak; now it is nonexistent.”  
  
“That’s why they can’t maintain Dean’s filters anymore,” Sam concluded. “So the hunters are supposed to go around and... what? Fighting normal demons wasn’t hard enough, now we have to take on the most powerful demons in Hell?”  
  
“Unlikely. I do not know of any hunters who are likely to survive an encounter with even the least of the newcomers.” Castiel looked thoughtful. “You perhaps, with Dean’s aid.”  
  
“Fantastic. In a couple of weeks, Dean will be as big of a threat! Even if he wasn’t, I can’t devote my life to fighting an endless wave of demons. I _have_ a quest already. Is there any way to... I don’t know, undo what the demons have done so that the angels can wrap Dean up again?”  
  
“The barrier is being maintained at its current level by a constant stream of power pushing it down. If you cut the power, the angels would return to where Lucifer bound them in the first place.”  
  
“Where they can help Dean?”  
  
“Indeed.”  
  
Sam chose to interpret the emotionless quality of the angel’s tone as Divine reserve instead of skepticism. It was better for his sanity.  
  
“That sounds great, but cutting the power puts us right back to me hunting down and trying to... what? Kill a whole bunch of over-powered Rendering demons? There has to be another way.” Sam tried to be optimistic. “What about that disk you gave me to use at Illchester -- that drove all the demons away and stripped their power for a few days?”  
  
“That disk was carved out of the wood of a tree that has not grown on this planet in five thousand years. The materials are very precise; there is no way to create another one.”  
  
“It probably wouldn’t have been useful anyway. I would need a spell a thousand times more powerful to be anything but a waste of time.” Sam raked a frustrated hand through his wet hair.  
  
Castiel cocked his head, seemingly untouched by the rain though the edges of his coat fluttered in the restless air. “The disk I gave you was copied from a Ward that is vastly more powerful. If you had the original, it would not only banish every demon in this Plane back to the Rendering, at best guess it would take them at least a century of your time to recover themselves enough to even make the crossing again, much less interfere in anything more... substantial. It would only affect the demons in this Plane, but that should wipe out enough to accomplish your goal.”  
  
“ _What?_ ” Sam attention sharpened. “Where is it? How do I find it?”  
  
“It has been lost for many years,” the angel said solemnly.  
  
“Of course it has.” Sam’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “How long is ‘many years’ exactly?”  
  
“It was carved on another continent and carried here across a great bridge of ice. None of my kind have been aware of it since. We know only that it must still exist, as its destruction would shake the Heavens and not pass without note.”  
  
Sam’s shoulder slumped. “A great bridge of... the land bridge? You people haven’t seen it since humans crossed to North America on the land bridge? That was like--” Sam wracked his brain, “--twenty thousand years ago!”  
  
“As I said, many years.”  
  
“This doesn’t help me,” Sam growled. “This doesn’t sound any easier to find than just figuring out a way to free the angels in the first place!”  
  
“Perhaps not. You asked for help and I am afraid this alternative is all I have to offer. The Seal is an incredible force of Creation and Order. Its simple presence should burn like a beacon. For it to be hidden from us means that it must lie in a place of great Chaos and Entropy.”  
  
“A place of Chaos and Entropy?” Sam frowned. “You mean like a volcano or something?”  
  
Castiel looked unfocused again, then stiffened. “I must go.”  
  
“Wait!”  
  
“We are in danger of being noticed, which could be... unhealthy, for you. I wish you luck.”  
  
Before Sam could try and muster a more compelling argument, lightning flickered and the angel was gone. Sam flung a candle at the wall in frustration; it was immediately doused by the pouring rain.  
  
He tugged his cell phone from the pocket of clinging, wet jeans and called his brother to come get him.  
  
The Impala rolled to a stop in the parking lot a few yards away about twenty minutes later and Sam darted through the downpour to climb inside. Dean grimaced at the water but didn’t say anything. He reached over the benchseat and dropped a towel into Sam’s lap. Sam picked it up with a muttered thanks and rubbed briskly at his hair.  
  
“What are we gonna do about the shed?” Dean asked. “People are going to find it and think there’s a satanic cult in the area. Which I guess doesn’t matter much, but rumors start going around and your reading habits at the library will get a lot more attention.”  
  
Sam opened his mouth, but before he could reply, a crack of lightning struck the ancient building and the small structure exploded into a ruin of flames.  
  
“Cool; I like it when they’re helpful,” was Dean’s only comment as he shifted the Impala into drive. Sam gave the clouds a wary look. “How did the conversation go?”  
  
“About like you’d expect,” Sam snorted. “Can’t help, don’t know, and nothing. Castiel did confirm what you thought about the demons, though, sort of. And there might be a _tiny_ glimmer of hope.”  
  
“Fantastic. And we’re out of food. Tell me about it on the way to the store.”

  
~~~~~

 

  “So, that’s it then?” Dean asked about fifteen minutes later. They were picking up a few groceries at a mini mart on the outskirts of town. It wasn’t Sam’s ideal choice of places to have a serious conversation about Hell, Heaven and angelic revelations, but as Dean insisted, it wasn’t like anyone who overheard them was going to care or understand anyway. “Demons who were unhappy about us raining all over their parade at Illchester decided to throw a world-ending party anyway, used the energy they had stored up for the festivities to invite a few more guests, the newcomers used their muscle to shove the trap deeper into the Pit, and now we are crawling with super-jumped-up demons and I am _totally_ screwed. And Heaven’s best and brightest won’t do squat because they basically say this isn’t their mess. Is that everything?”  
  
“It’s not that it isn’t their mess, it’s that God told them to stay out of it.”  
  
Dean snorted. “They were flitting around like mad when the demons were trying to bust Lucifer out. But now that the demons are just focused on the planetary roast part, suddenly they have to keep their hands clean?”  
  
“That was different.”  
  
“Of course,” Dean said dryly, “it always is. So did your feathered friend happen to have any helpful suggestions or good news to go with the suicidal despair it’s dishing out?”  
  
“No,” Sam grumbled, then hesitated. “Well, maybe? You remember that ward I had at Illchester, the one I used to banish all of the demons before they could take their frustrations out on us?”  
  
“Yeah, good times.” Dean pulled a can of black beans off the shelf and added it to their cart. “I love being ripped out of my body. My _own_ body; it’s not like I was even possessing someone! Getting tossed out like some weak-willed ghost? For _weeks?_ That sucked, man.”  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
“No, you aren’t,” Dean snorted.  
  
“Nope,” Sam admitted with an easy shrug. “Anyways, that ward was a little copy of a more powerful one. Castiel seemed to think the original was powerful enough to banish all of the demons in this Plane, and maybe keep them helpless in Hell for a century before they would be strong enough to cause more trouble.”  
  
Dean gave a low whistle and raised his eyebrows. “That would be awesome. Stop all of the current chaos, get my filters back in place, and give us a century to finish my side of the bargain? What’s the catch?”  
  
“No one has seen it in something like twenty thousand years. All Castiel could say for sure was that it was in North America last time any of the angels knew where it was.”  
  
“Twenty _thousand?_ ” Dean scowled. “That’s not any more helpful than the crap we are already working on.”  
  
“That’s what I said... also, it’s supposed to be strong, Dean. _Really_ strong.”  
  
“Which would be the entire reason to dig it up in the first place,” Dean agreed.  
  
“Castiel said _every demon_. It would banish you too,” Sam said pointedly.  
  
“So then maybe I won’t be around to help,” Dean shrugged, then pinned Sam in place with a serious look. “Sam, if we don’t find a way to restore my filters soon, I _need_ to be banished. I’m not kidding. And if the angels in Heaven won’t help, then we either have to free the angels in Hell, or at least reverse the latest shit so they can collar me again, or find a way to break the curse so I can leave this plane on my own.”  
  
“The only way to break the curse is if I die, Dean,” Sam said in a low voice. “I die, you go to Hell, no one frees the angels, and they take their frustrations out on you for _eternity_.”  
  
“There has to be another way, Sam.”  
  
Sam licked his lips and found the shelf suddenly interesting.  
  
“Sam?” Dean asked in a voice heavy with suspicion.  
  
“There’s another possibility we haven’t discussed. We could... find another demon to take the curse. You would be free and I would still be here to work on the problem.”  
  
“No.” Dean’s voice was flat and cold. Sam pressed on anyway.  
  
“There has to be another demon out there who genuinely doesn’t want Lucifer freed, Dean. Finding one can’t be harder than our other options!”  
  
“ _No,_ ” Dean hissed again.  
  
“Then what?” Sam snapped. “We’ve been looking for months to break the trap without a single freaking clue, finding Castiel’s Ward doesn’t seem any more likely, and you have how long again?”  
  
Dean stepped into Sam’s space, grabbing him by one arm and shoving him back against the shelf of canned goods. He leaned in close and hissed, “Have you lost your fucking mind?! There is not a chance in _Hell_ , Sam!”  
  
“You prefer the alternative?!” Sam spat back. He tried to pull his arm free, but Dean’s fingers tightened hard enough to elicit an involuntary grunt of pain.  
  
“Gee, let’s think. Rather than you being a puppet for whatever twisted, fucked-up monster we find to take you on? Yes! You think even if they don’t want Lucifer free that they will have any interest in our goals? If I’m going to burn for an eternity either way, I’d just as soon do it without knowing I gave you away like a pet! You think your situation sucks now? I’m nice to you and Ruby wanted you compliant; we’re not going to find anyone else who gives a damn about your wellbeing, Sam. You know what demons like? They like pain, and fear, and degradation. I thought you were supposed to be _smart!_ ”  
  
They glared at each other and Sam was alarmed to see a smoky swirl of gray spiraling ominously into the vivid green of his brother’s eyes. He glanced down and the label of a can Dean still held in his free hand was curling at the edges and starting to peel. They were alone on their aisle, but the rustling noises of other people in the store were suddenly loud to his ears as he was reminded they were not the only ones present. It was abruptly imperative to Sam that he take the conversation, and his brother, someplace more... isolated.  
  
Dean’s nostrils flared and he looked away, making an obvious effort to control himself. His fingers on Sam’s arm tightened a fraction more.  
  
Sam brushed his attention over what he identified in his mind as the link between them, pushing just enough to try and sense his brother’s mental state. He had shied away from that type of contact since the incident in the bedroom, haunted by what had happened. But this was almost an emergency so Sam forced himself to reach out anyway. The results were... uncertain. What he could feel of Dean’s emotions was a confused jumble of rage and fear, all mixed together with something too alien for Sam to name. A something that reminded him of ashes on bare skin and the sensation of falling.  
  
It was definitely time to leave.  
  
“Dean, let’s go.”  
  
“We need--” Dean’s glance took in the neat shelves of food surrounding them.  
  
“We don’t,” Sam said firmly. “We’ve got cereal, which is fine for tonight. We’ll hit the store tomorrow. I just want to go home.”  
  
“Home?” Dean echoed questioningly, the uncharacteristic distance of his tone ringing alarms in Sam’s head.  
  
“The house, Dean. I want to go. Now.”  
  
Dean released Sam as if he had been burned and turned wordlessly toward the main doors. They were almost there when a pair of guys pushed in and Sam swore internally, cursing whatever fate dictated that nothing in his life ever go smoothly. The newcomers wore dark hoodies and track shoes. With their faces lowered and hands tucked out of sight, they couldn’t have screamed ‘ _threat_ ’ any louder. Sam gave a wary glance toward the register where a couple was being rung up by the mini-mart’s bored-looking teenage cashier. A young, tired-looking woman was reading the label on a box of crackers a few feet away while her child hung from one hand and chewed noisily on a granola bar beside her. The kid noticed Sam’s attention and deliberately crossed her eyes at him.  
  
Dean had also stopped to watch as the guys headed for the register. Sam didn’t have a gun; he knew Dean had one tucked into his jeans but that wasn’t going to help much if this turned into a hostage situation. As if orchestrated by his pessimistic thought, Sam felt no surprise when both of the men pulled weapons from beneath their hoodies and barked orders at the customers to raise hands and kneel.  
  
Sam threw a sidelong glance at Dean, but his brother had an odd half-smile on his face as he sank gracefully to the cheap tile of the floor. There was nothing human in the movement and Sam suddenly wanted Dean out of the store more than he wanted to avoid being shot.  
  
“Look, guys--” he began.  
  
“Shut up! We’ll take your money, your jewelry and your silence. Everyone does what we say and cooperates and no one will get hurt.”  
  
Sam closed his mouth, but he was pretty certain someone was going to get hurt. Dean was utterly, and ominously, silent.  
  
One of the men told the cashier to put all of her money into a paper bag. The other man was splitting his attention between Sam, Dean, the couple at the counter and the woman with her child, but seemed mostly focused on watching the woman at the counter twist her wedding ring desperately, trying to work it over her knuckle. Tears were running down her face as her husband stood watching with an expression of mingled shock and fear.  
  
“Looks like we’ll have to cut it off,” the second gunman commented coolly.  
  
That was too much for the woman’s husband. He took a step forward, shielding his wife. “We’re doing everything you aske--”  
  
His words cut off with a bang as deafening in meaning as in volume. The man crumpled to the floor, his expression startled and a bloody stain spreading over his chest. The only sound for a moment was his wife’s increasingly panicky breathing as she hyperventilated.  
  
“Anyone else have a problem?”  
  
“I do,” Dean said, standing. The gunman leveled his weapon and pulled the trigger. Dean blinked, then glanced down and stuck a finger through the hole in his shirt. “Guess you should have brought something bigger?”  
  
Then, while everyone except Sam gaped at him in shock, Dean crossed the floor in three easy strides and casually broke the second gunman’s neck. The first man was clutching the paper sack of money in one hand and his gun in the other, stumbling away from Dean.  
  
“Stay back, man!” He fired several times wildly. Two of the shots hit Dean, several of the others slammed into racks and displays, and one of the overhead lights exploded. Sam felt a burning sting slice along his arm and looked down sharply to see a tear in the fabric over his bicep and spreading scarlet. He quickly glanced back up to meet Dean’s eyes, now gone completely gray. Sam couldn’t read anything in those eyes, but the rush of fury he felt in the link was being quickly eclipsed by the alien emotions he had noted before. Beneath Dean’s feet, spider cracks started running like water, spreading in a widening ring as the finish faded and the grout crumbled. A light fixture fell from a mount of suddenly decayed lumber and crashed onto the floor. Sam’s eyes widened with horror; everyone else was still frozen in a kind of shock, but Sam doubted they had noticed the true threat, the uneven ring of Entropy pooling out from his brother.  
  
The demon his brother had become.  
  
That moment of frozen tableau felt like it lasted hours instead of seconds, then the ring struck the gunman who had shot Sam and he crumbled into a pile of lumpy dust and scraps of cloth, the fall of the gun muffled by the remains. The people left standing in the store started screaming and stumbling back. Sam searched for some hint of awareness in Dean’s eyes but his brother stood like a statue, expression calm. The link between them was alive, but what he was sensing reminded Sam too much of the chaotic freefall of the bedroom and he wrenched himself away as best he could. Rippling magic destroyed tile under his feet and sent a display to his right crumpling to the ground, but Sam himself remained untouched. Jarred from his own shock by the disparity, Sam turned from Dean just in time to see the woman crouched over her husband’s body fall to mingled ash with his corpse as the cashier scrambled over the counter and sprinted for the exit at the back of the store.  
  
The woman with her daughter was still frozen in horror, oblivious to the immediate danger they were in. Sam grabbed the girl and pulled her mother by the arm, hauling them both towards the exit door standing open from the cashier’s escape. Shaken back to action, the woman snatched her daughter from Sam’s arms and darted away, giving one wild-eyed look back into the building before vanishing around the corner. Seconds later, Sam heard a car squeal to life and speed away.  
  
Lacking options and hearing the whine of sirens in the distance, Sam was steeling his nerve to confront Dean and try and get him out of the building before the police showed up, when his brother walked out of the exit door himself. Dean pressed the Impala’s keys into Sam’s hand and slid into the passenger side without a word. He wrapped his arms around himself and looked determinedly out the window. Sam started to speak twice, but there was really nothing to say.  
  
Sam could see flashing blue lights reflected on buildings down the road and turned the key in the ignition, pulling away as the first of the police arrived on the scene.

  
~~~~~

 

  When they reached the house, they sat in darkness and silence for a few minutes, Sam not knowing how to start the conversation they needed to have, and Dean lost in his own thoughts. Sam didn’t have any kind of clue as to his Dean’s state of mind. In a panic, he had cut off what little he could sense from his brother, but he didn’t try to kid himself that he had cut off Dean’s ability to read him in return.  
  
“Dean,” Sam began.  
  
“Go get your stuff.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Dean faced him for the first time since the store, and the streetlights let Sam see the irritation on his face. But the expression was entirely Dean’s, and even with the lingering horror of what had happened in the store, Sam felt a wave of relief. Which didn’t make Dean’s directive any less confusing.  
  
“Your stuff,” Dean repeated slower, like Sam was too dim to understand. “Your laptop, jacket, anything else you want to keep. Go get it.”  
  
Sam frowned. “The police won’t be able to find us that fast. And I didn’t see any security cameras; they might not even be able to find us at all.”  
  
“I can’t stay here, Sam. And I’m not leaving you alone in a place that might be compromised. Grab your crap and let’s get going. The longer we stay here, the greater the risk.”  
  
“Risk to who, Dean?” Sam asked tensely, making no move to open the door.  
  
“Everyone. You saw what happened in the store. We’re out of time to play games, Sam.”  
  
“So what then?”  
  
Dean tightened the arms he had crossed over his chest. “You know what. We can’t figure out how to free the angels, and we don’t have time to chase more wild gooses. I’m losing myself in pieces, Sam, and I can’t tell you when or how it’s going to happen, just that it’s going to be more and worse. People died tonight. I’m not shedding any tears over the jackass who shot you,” Dean glanced at the blood-soaked fabric clinging to the shallow score alone Sam’s arm, “but I know there were others. Cutting me loose has to be our first priority, before it’s not just a couple of people in a mini-mart, but entire cities, states or continents I’m fucking up. Are you starting to get the picture, Sam?”  
  
Sam rubbed at his eyes. “I can try contacting Missouri again about breaking the curse. I just... if she doesn’t have any ideas, then we’re down to suicide or auction.”  
  
“I already told you the auction idea wasn’t gonna happen,” Dean snarled.  
  
“Well, suicide doesn’t do anyone much good either, Dean! The demons will still destroy the world, at least as far as anything living is concerned, and you’ll be tortured for an eternity. So how the hell does that make any sense either?!”  
  
Dean glared. “I’ll fucking kill anyone who touches you.”  
  
“Is that what set you off tonight?” Sam glanced down at the wound that was starting to hurt in a way he couldn’t keep ignoring.  
  
Dean looked down into the darkness of the footwell. “I was already on edge; it might have happened anyway. Things are getting messy in my head, Sam.”  
  
“So we’re going to Kansas?”  
  
“No. I’m going to the desert. You’re going to find an answer.”

  
~~~~~

 

  Dean made Sam sit on the kitchen counter while he cleaned out and stitched up the bullet score. Sam, no stranger to either gunshot wounds or kitchen medicine, did an admirable job of holding still for the process. Dean only wished he would have also stayed quiet. Events were shoving them towards a bottleneck of bad outcomes and Sam resisting the necessary didn’t make anything easier.  
  
“I don’t like splitting up,” Sam insisted for the tenth time in as many minutes.  
  
“Missouri answer her phone yet?”  
  
“No,” Sam snapped. “Which you damn well know.”  
  
“Which is why I’m going to go spend time out in the sand with miles of nothing between me and civilization, while you go bang on her door until she answers. It’s not like anything out there will hurt me, Sam. I’m not _alive_. We just need to buy some time while you... work things out.”  
  
“So you’ll just sit quietly out in the desert alone going slowly insane while I frantically try to track down a woman who for all we know has gone on a year-long vacation to the Outer Hebrides?”  
  
“Where?”  
  
Sam rolled his eyes. “It doesn’t matter where, Dean. This is--”  
  
“Stupid?’ Dean suggested.  
  
“Yes!” Sam glared.  
  
“You have a better idea?”  
  
“Screw you.”  
  
“Sounds like ‘no’,” Dean said pointedly.  
  
He grabbed his brother’s face and forced Sam to meet his eyes. He could feel Sam’s pain and it made his heart ache for the shitty hand fate had dealt them. Again. But he could also hear the enthralling song of the true Hell through the decaying filters that bound him, beckoning him home and growing louder by the hour.  
  
“We’re out of aces, Sammy,” he said, as gently as he could, knowing no words or tone of voice would make Sam feel any better. “I fought my entire life to save people from monsters. Dad did, _you_ did. But if you don’t do this, if these filters break and I’m stuck here by the curse, nothing we’ve suffered or done will have meant a damn thing. I want my life, my _death_ , to have mattered, Sam. I want all of the shit we’ve slogged through to have been for something.” He let his hands fall away.  
  
There was a suspicious wetness in Sam’s eyes, but he nodded at Dean’s words. “I know. And I know we don’t have any other good options. Just... when is it going to be someone else’s turn to deal with this crap?”  
  
Dean shrugged and stepped back so Sam could slide off the counter. He shouldered Sam’s duffle bag, tossed the house keys on the table and gestured towards the door. “Probably whenever you die. Which for the sake of everyone, had better not be soon.”

 

** Chapter Seven **

Thou, straggler into loving arms,  
Young climber up of knees  
when I forget thy thousand ways,  
then life and all shall cease  
                                                         ~Mary Lamb, Parental Recollections

When Sam thought of the word ‘desert’, his mind was filled with images of frozen waves of sand, crested into timeless sculpture above endless miles of empty plains. He knew better, but it was still always a subtle disappointment to look out over the scrub bushes and skittering life of the deserts in the western United States. Not that they didn’t have their own beauty, but one day he wanted to have the chance to look out on what he always thought of in a guilty corner of his mind as a _real_ desert.  
  
For their purposes, though, the Sonoma was big enough and had enough desolate corners that they both agreed Dean should be able to get lost, and stay lost, while Sam tried to track down Missouri. The state capital of Arizona being smack in the middle of it aside, it was still a freaking huge area of land.  
  
The trip hadn’t been long by their standards, but it was still longer than Sam was used to spending behind the wheel without trading off driving. It was usually a battle to get Dean to give up the keys for even short distances, but this time Dean had categorically refused to take a turn at all, spending most of the trip curled up on the passenger side with his eyes closed. He rarely responded to Sam’s questions or needling remarks, and when he did, it was only long enough to growl at Sam to shut up.  
  
Sam, with nothing to do but poke at Dean or dwell on the misery of their circumstances, refused to leave his brother alone until his eye caught on the yellowing curl of the map tossed onto the seat between them somewhere between Tucumcari and Santa Rosa.  
  
“Dean.” Sam’s voice was sharp with alarm. Even with his gaze torn between watching the road and watching the map, he could easily see the paper aging and starting to crumble.  
  
“I know, Sam! What do you think I’m doing?! Shut up and let me concentrate before it’s more than just the fucking paper products.”  
  
After that, Sam kept an almost religious silence as they sped through the night and into the next morning’s dawn.  
  
Just at sunset, they were close enough to their destination that Dean started giving directions, following some kind of internal map or idea. He found paths that looked untraveled in years, mere dusty tracks around boulders and cacti, until they came to a place that had obviously served as some kind of parking lot at one point. An ancient wooden picnic bench, warped and battered by the elements, stood at one corner. Dean barely waited for the Impala to stop before he shoved open the door and escaped. He stopped about a hundred feet away and sank onto the parched, dusty ground, an expression of vast relief on his face.  
  
Sam followed more slowly, stopping a cautious distance away, waiting to see what happened. “Are you feeling better?”  
  
Dean turned at the sound of his voice, giving Sam his full attention. He had gotten used to the muffled cotton feel of his senses under the inner wards and filters that let him play human. With those restraints worn so thin, he was unfolding back into them and it was amazing. Whole universes of jarring color and sensation assaulted him with each step, with every second. It was hard to see past them, think past them, to focus on what passed for this Plane’s reality. More difficult every minute to remember he had to make the struggle. Without the chain binding him to Sam, he would have shattered what remained of his prison days ago and fled back to the only place he belonged now.  
  
There was something... odd, about the curse. Dean knew what the angels had taught him in his struggles, and what he had learned in Hell, but it hadn’t prepared him to be an expert in all forms of magic, and elaborate castings were definitely not his specialty. There was some flavor to the spell binding him to Sam, a subtle twist that he had not sensed during the year they had been stopping the Apocalypse. It tugged at him, and more interestingly, tugged at his demonic nature. With his human values and comprehensions being chipped away like old paint, Dean had thought he would shed interest in his brother as well. He certainly hadn’t remembered or given a damn about Sam when he had first been returned to the Plane. Family ties should be nothing to the demon he was becoming, like they hadn’t held up against the violent birthing process of his new nature all those many, many years ago in Hell. But now, despite the breakdowns, there was a... concern for Sam shot through all aspects of his self. A desire to keep him alive, and... unaltered. Even during the brief flashes when Dean was barely a fragment of himself, the demon still kept Sam safe, unchanged by the whirl of Entropy that molded and warped everything that it touched.  
  
He forced his attention back to his brother’s question. “Now that I’m out of the car? Sure.”  
  
“I didn’t bring it up before because you were... busy,” Sam said with some reluctance, “but I haven’t been able to get cell phone reception in three hundred miles. Is that you?”  
  
“Probably.” Dean shrugged. “I’m doing the best I can.”  
  
“I’m not bitching, Dean. I’m just trying to keep a handle on what’s going on.”  
  
Dean snorted. “Best of luck. I can’t keep a handle on it and I’m living it from the inside.”  
  
Sam eyed him for a moment without speaking.  
  
“Spit it out, Sam. We haven’t got all day. You have things to do, remember?”  
  
Sam scowled at the reminder but didn’t argue about it. “You destroyed my map; you... did what you did to that convenience store -- but both times you walked out with your clothes intact. It doesn’t make any sense. If it’s an aura, and you can’t control it when you flash over or whatever, then why are those things safe?”  
  
Now it was Dean’s turn to weigh his brother with his eyes. It did make sense, kinda, but it wasn’t a sense Dean was sure Sam was going to like. Dean himself found it disquieting, and he worried that if he told the truth, Sam would depend on it when that dependability would be... unwise. But there had been enough lies and half-truths between them. Sam needed all the weapons Dean could give him, and he didn’t know how much more time he would have. And Sam wasn’t stupid, current reluctance to face reality aside.  
  
“This thing between us, it seems to run a lot deeper than it should. Deeper than should be possible. Deeper than... me, maybe.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Dean scowled and tried to fit words around what he felt happening within himself. “It... cares. But not _cares_ , really, more like it’s... interested, in you.”  
  
“It?”  
  
“I’m liking these one-word questions, Sam. I feel like you’re really helping with this conversation, bringing your squeaky voice and all,” Dean snapped.  
  
“ _What_ is _it_ , Dean?” Sam gritted out.  
  
“Me. The real me, not Dean me.”  
  
“It’s... interested in me?” Sam asked slowly.  
  
Dean shrugged. “Probably because we’ve got this thing between us rooted way down deep. It’s getting all sorts of information from you that it wouldn’t normally get. It’s curious and... I don’t know. It’s not that Entropic demons can’t have emotions -- emotions lead to all sorts of great Entropic things. It’s that they lack the context to apply anything like that to this Plane. But with this link, it’s getting a different... experience.”  
  
“So maybe it will control itself, not be some kind of catastrophic hurricane of destruction?” The hope in his brother’s voice was hard for Dean to hear; he had to keep Sam grounded firmly in reality.  
  
“It’s chaotic, Sam,” Dean said firmly. “It might preserve things that are deeply connected or important to you minute by minute, like how I’m supposed to appear, but it-- _I’m_ , not going to stay focused enough to make that permanent. Like I said before: I think you’re safe. I can’t make any kind of promise about anything else. This Plane is like a prison where every second is a new misery. The longer I’m here, the more the filters erode, the greater the discomfort. Soon it will be pain. Elemental creatures lash out at things that hurt them, Sam. And I don’t know how far fascination is going to get you. You need to hurry.”  
  
Sam nodded. Dean could feel his misery. The trap was closing around them both and the best they could hope for was to mitigate some of the damage. He really, _really_ , hoped Missouri had an answer for them. He didn’t want Sam to die, but there was no way in any Plane of reality he would turn him over to another demon. He’d cut his brother’s throat himself before he let that happen. Sam was _his_ ; and even if he hadn’t been, Dean had never been _that_ much of a monster. He wouldn’t willingly turn a rusted nail over to another demon, much less his _brother_.  
  
Dean looked up at the glittering stars of the clear desert night as the sunset stains on the western horizon slowly faded. He heard the crunch of grit under boots as Sam came closer. Dean tasted the energy of his life in the air, so much more vivid than the pinpricks around them, gleaming like fireflies to his altered sight.  
  
“Do you need anything before I go?” His brother’s voice was made up of layers of sound that vibrated in individual currents to Dean’s ears. Each one was distinct and interesting as they rebounded off of leaves, sand, the car, the bench. Fractured into discord and shambles. He traced the rippling patterns effortlessly until they died away, unaware of the ticking seconds.  
  
“Dean?” The was fear now in his brother’s voice as Sam redrew his attention. Dean forced himself to focus again.  
  
“I’m... here. And I don’t need anything.”  
  
“Okay. Well, before I leave, we really should... it’s been about three weeks. If we don’t do it now, I’m not going to get very far.”  
  
That snapped Dean fully to attention. “Are you asking for something, Sam?”  
  
The moonlight was bright enough he could see Sam’s scowl even without his altered senses. The curse was singing between them, telling Dean all he needed to know about the ache in Sam’s body, the awful need crawling over his skin. Dean thought about making Sam spell out what he wanted, speak in clear and painful detail. But he decided having Sam ask at all was sweet enough without twisting the knife anymore. Sam had enough knives in him. They both did.  
  
“Let’s do this then.”  
  
Sam nodded, some tension falling out of the line of his broad shoulders as he headed back to dig in the Impala’s trunk. He trudged back through the scrub carrying a rough canvas tarp and a sleeping bag.  
  
He was kneeling to smooth out the corners when Dean crouched beside him and cupped a hand around the back of his neck, pulling him into a kiss tinged with blood. Sam responded helplessly, the power calling to something within him that he had no control over. Any part of his mind that wanted to protest as he eagerly chased Dean’s tongue back into his mouth being easily drowned out by every other shred of his being clamoring for more of the magic that sparked in Dean’s blood. It curled warmly into a cold place in Sam’s mind, but Sam fought the pull. Forced himself to push away until he was blinking at Dean from a few feet away. His senses were still spinning but he was aware enough to scoot back when Dean frowned and reached for him again.  
  
“Sam?”  
  
Sam shook his head, still trying to muster the words he needed to say when all he wanted to do was wrestle Dean back down and find a new vein to open.  
  
“Sam?” Dean was closer now, hand reaching out to touch Sam’s face, and rising fear gave Sam back what he was looking for.  
  
“No. Wait.”  
  
Dean’s concerned expression was sliding into anger. “What do you mean, ‘ _no_ ’? You want to pull this shit _now?!_ ”  
  
“That’s not-- it’s not _this_ , Dean! It’s what happened last time. I just want to talk for a sec first.”  
  
“With the bedroom? I hate to tell you this, Sam, but I don’t think the sand is going to care much about a little aging. And the scrub will grow back. Stop scooting away.” He reached for Sam again but sat back with an annoyed sigh at the glare his brother directed at him.  
  
“It’s not what happened to the room, _Dean_ , it’s what happened... inside.” Sam grimaced. “When we did this last time, something happened inside of my mind. I could feel you, but not like you. I felt like I was... falling. It was awful, and--” He sighed. “The room was worse when I woke up, because it was real. But if we’re doing this again...”  
  
“What you saw inside was real too, Sam,” Dean said quietly.  
  
Sam nodded grimly. “I know. Can you -- keep me out, maybe?”  
  
Dean sighed. “You shouldn't have been dragged in in the first place. It’s the curse, the link between us. I don’t understand why Lilith would have carved something this... wide. It doesn't make any sense. I don’t understand what’s happening and I don’t know how much I can do to prevent it this time either.”  
  
“Can you try?”  
  
“Yeah, Sam, I can try. No promises.”  
  
Sam nodded and stood long enough to kick off his jeans and pull his t-shirt over his head. Goose bumps prickled up almost immediately in the evening air, but Sam wasn’t worried about the cold. Not when he knelt back into Dean’s embrace and kissed him hungrily, starving for the power of his blood, and not when he was pressed down naked onto rough canvas under the clear, starry vault of the desert sky. When the world began to fall away and the spiraling wash of converging realities threatened to rip him apart, he could still feel his brother wrapped around him, shielding him from the worst of the storm.

  
~~~~~

 

  Sam woke up with the sunrise to find himself in one of his least favorite situations: sticky, sweaty and sandy. He was curled up on his side with his face pressed into Dean’s shoulder, wearing the boxers and his t-shirt he vaguely remembered Dean redressing him in to ward off the chill of the desert night, the sleeping bag unzipped and thrown on top. He pushed himself up to a sitting position and grimaced, reminded again that he wasn’t twenty anymore and there were consequences for sleeping wherever he happened to fall.  
  
“This is disgusting,” he said aloud to the hawk circling overhead and the low brush a few feet away.  
  
Dean rolled over beside him and stretched out on his stomach, resting his head on folded hands as he looked up at Sam. “Don’t say that. Sex is a beautiful and natural thing. Didn’t you pay attention in middle school?”  
  
Sam snorted and scratched at a particularly itchy place under his boxers, grimacing at the dried, sandy mess that flaked off under his fingernails. “I don’t have a problem with the sex, Dean, though there isn’t anything _natural_ about it. I have a problem with waking up with the aftermath congealing all over me.”  
  
Dean smirked. “I don’t mind.”  
  
“You’re disgusting too,” Sam grumbled, standing up and reaching for his jeans. He shook them out, then thought about scorpions and other desert dwellers and gave the pants another good shake.  
  
Dean rolled his eyes and sat up on the rumpled blanket, recognizing the gesture. “Don’t worry; none of them would dare. The creepy crawlies of the world have a better understanding of my nature than humans do. They give me lots and lots of space.”  
  
Sam gave his brother another _look_ and shook the battered denim until he was satisfied his clothes were uninhabited, then pulled them on. There wasn’t any place to clean up; he would just have to live with what he could brush off until he found a gas station and could do a better job of washing.  
  
He glanced over at where Dean was still sprawled out naked and frowned as something caught his eye. When Dean had first returned, after the bargain he’d made to save Sam’s life had sent him to Hell, there had been the dark sigil of a demonic lock marked on the inside of his thigh. Sam had recognized it from his own experience with possession years earlier. While trying to save Dean from cultists in the southwest, Sam had been forced to slash through the sigil. Worthless broken, the next time he had seen Dean naked, the mark had been gone. Until now.  
  
“Get a new tattoo?”  
  
Dean raised an eyebrow, then followed Sam’s gaze to the lock and shrugged. “A few days ago.”  
  
“Where was I?” Sam asked, baffled.  
  
“Researching.” Dean made a gesture that could be reasonably construed to imply either something with wings or something insane. Sam’s eyes narrowed but he got the message.  
  
“Why? You anticipating a demonic rush on short guys and need to mark your claim?”  
  
Dean snorted. “I’m more than six feet tall, Sam. It’s only mutant freaks like you that would consider me _short_.”  
  
Sam waited, and after a minute or two of his level stare, Dean gave in.  
  
“I just thought it might help me remember to stick with this body, you know? It’s not exactly hard to break, but it’s kinda like tying a ribbon on your finger. Demon-me is going to want to keep possession of a body because it’s more shielded from free energy that way. I just want to encourage myself to keep _this_ body. The trappings don’t really matter, but you think of me this way, and the real me seems like it might be willing to take a cue or two from you so...” Dean shrugged. “Also, Entropic demons don’t think like Rendering demons do. When I’m other, I’m not going to have an agenda that requires the body I possess to be _human_. But we’re still going to share this curse. Are you following me here?”  
  
With the smeared bruises of Dean’s fingerprints from an evening of sex visible on his skin, Sam was pretty sure he was following, and the road was going to some horrific places. It hadn’t even occurred to him that the demon might wander from his brother’s body.  
  
“What about another couple of locks?” Sam demanded. “Would that make it harder to leave?”  
  
Dean grinned like he thought Sam was kidding, but his voice was very serious when he spoke again. “Sam, when you go, if you come back, don’t bring anything you value.”  
  
“ _If_ I come back?”  
  
“We both know the score,” Dean said simply. “But if you do have to come find me, don’t bring the Impala, or anything else you don’t want to lose. Out here, without things to center myself on, it’s going to go faster.”  
  
Sam almost asked what ‘it’ was, but realization stopped the question before it could escape. He had been doing a good job of pushing away what they were doing in the desert, what last night had really been, but he couldn’t ignore reality anymore. “I’m coming back, Dean.”  
  
“Not if you get the job done and break this thing between us.”  
  
Sam didn’t have much argument to that. He folded the bedding back up with harsh, jerky movements as a distraction from the turmoil churning in him. He was aware of Dean’s stare burning like the sun against his skin.  
  
“We’ve been over this, Sam. We don’t have any choices.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
Dean held his arms out and Sam stepped into the embrace, wrapping his arms around his brother tightly, comfort and solidarity with none of the overtones of the previous night. This was all about family, and loss, and things that couldn’t be changed. After a moment, Sam stepped back and hugged the bedding to his chest instead.  
  
“I’ll do my best.” Sam tried to project a resolve in his voice that he didn’t feel.  
  
The confidence in Dean’s answering smile was everything Sam needed to see.  
  
“I know you will, Sam. The world is counting on it.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

** Chapter Eight **

The floods is threat'ning  
My very life today  
Gimme, gimme shelter  
Or I'm gonna fade away  
                                                ~Gimme Shelter, The Rolling Stones

The solitary drive to Kansas was one of the longest of Sam’s life. Dean had stood out on the desert sand and waved him off, keeping his distance like there was an invisible line he couldn’t cross. Sam wanted to stay with him; it seemed such a perfunctory goodbye when it could be the last time they would ever meet -- but if anything had ever defined his family, it was an understanding of duty. So he pulled the Impala onto the road without looking back and told himself it was desert grit and allergies that he wiped from his eyes with his sleeve. There wasn’t anything else to be said between them, and every minute now counted. Besides, dimly in the back of his mind he still carried an awareness of his brother. The link for Sam was virtually useless, but it was still a strange comfort as he burned miles down the highway in search of a way to sever Dean from the Plane forever.  
  
Missouri still wasn’t answering her phone when he finally had service again. Sam left her another voicemail and tossed the useless cell down onto the empty seat beside him.  
  
He drove straight from the desert parking lot where he left Dean to Missouri’s front door, stopping only for a hasty wash in a rest stop bathroom and gas when the tank was dry. Her driveway was empty when he pulled up to the curb in front of her house. Knock-out roses were blooming unkempt in front of the low, whitewashed porch and newspapers were scattered across the planks. Sam rang the bell anyway, then pulled the screen door open to bang directly on the door.  
  
He gave up after five minutes and spun, frustrated, not knowing what else to do. Missouri wasn’t a hunter he could have Bobby make some calls and track down. He needed a different plan, but first he needed a nap and a real shower. He tried calling her again, and leaned his head against the wood with entirely new curse words bubbling to mind when a cell phone’s musical chime sounded from somewhere beyond the front door.  
  
Sam was pulling the keys from his pocket and storming back down the steps to go find a motel when an ancient Cadillac in a lemonish color turned into the driveway. Missouri rolled down the window, glaring at him.  
  
“Samuel Winchester, if you’ve put one scratch on that door you had better believe you’ll be spending the rest of the weekend refinishing it. Don’t think for one moment I won’t hold to that either!”  
  
Sam was so relieved to see her he would have happily agreed to refinish the entire house in that moment. She climbed out of the car and pulled an overnight bag from the backseat. Sam was reaching to take it for her when she froze and stared at him.  
  
“Oh, honey, what’s happened to you?”  
  
“Too much to tell you out here,” he said quietly, “but I need your help, Missouri. Can I come in?”  
  
She relinquished the bag to him and nodded. “I think you’d better. I had a feeling I needed to be back today. Good thing for you I put off visiting my cousin in Scotland and was just a state over helping out a friend.” She fixed him with a hard look. “And where is that brother of yours? I know he’s not anywhere close by, and I didn’t think there was a thing in this world that was going to get him to turn you loose. You boys have a falling out?”  
  
Sam followed her back up the stairs to the front door where she fumbled to find the front door key. “Not exactly. I had to leave him in the desert. Things are bad. There’s trouble.”  
  
Missouri’s expression turned grim. “You only have to turn on the television to see that much. Suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to find you involved.”  
  
She sighed and opened the door, motioned Sam inside.  
  
“Now, I’ve been traveling for half the day and you look five miles of bad road. There’s nothing I can help you with that won’t wait for a hot shower and some fresh clothes. Top of the stairs, room on the right. Meet me back in the kitchen when you’ve scrubbed off all the dirt. And please tell me you have something clean to wear?”

  
~~~~~

 

When Sam rejoined her in the kitchen, Missouri was pouring two glasses of tea and had sandwiches cut neatly on a plate. Sam never seemed to end up at her house except in times of serious trouble, but it still had a homey sort of air that appealed to the part of him that had always wanted a normal life. Just being in her sunny kitchen alone raised his mood enough to rekindle some hope. It was sorely needed; every way he and Dean had tried to turn only seemed to bring darker and darker prospects.  
  
She motioned him to a chair and then took her own. Sam wolfed down one of the sandwiches and started talking. Missouri, eyes intent and expression serious, listened patiently while he recounted what had happened since Illchester.  
  
He had written her a letter after the showdown with Lilith, to let her know he was still alive and how things had turned out, but everything since then was new information. He told her about Dean’s quest and the bargain with the angels in Hell, about his dreams that led nowhere, about disasters, disappearances, and what Castiel had confirmed about the demons. He talked about Dean losing himself in slow pieces. She didn’t look like it was news when Sam told her about the Entropic demons, and he filed it away to ask her about later; there were more pressing things on his plate.  
  
Halfway through, when the sandwiches were gone, they took their tea into the living room and Sam sprawled out on her oversized sofa.  
  
Missouri nodded occasionally while he spoke until Sam finally wound down to his most immediate problem.  
  
“Dean can’t stay here, in this world. He’s too destructive, and he can’t control it. The angel said that he can’t do anything for Dean by himself, and the others won’t help him. It’s forbidden or some crap like that, which doesn’t even have anything to  _do_  with Dean! He’s going to destroy the world all on his own if he stays here like this, and now I can’t even figure out how to send him back to Hell.”  
  
Missouri looked surprised for the first time since finding him on her lawn. “Why do you have to send him? If those filters are failing like he said, then he shouldn’t even still be here now. There must be something intensely powerful about, still binding him to this--”  
  
“It’s the curse!” Sam cut in, frustrated. “He said he can feel it twisted all through him, tying him here. There has to be something I can do to break it. I know you said nothing short of my death, but if Dean goes back to Hell, he can’t complete his side of his deal with the angels, and then I’m the only one left to do it. If I’m dead too... I don’t know why it’s always us, Missouri, but I don’t think anyone else can free them. I mean, I can’t find evidence that anyone else even knows they exist!”  
  
Missouri’s frown was deep and her brows were drawn. “Are you saying that curse Lilith cast on you is still there? After what happened in Illchester?”  
  
Sam blinked, surprised by her apparent confusion. “Yes. Shouldn’t it be? I didn’t die.”  
  
“What your brother did when he took it from Ruby was pick it up in one piece and just shift it over. He could do that because he didn’t really affect the curse, just confused it about its target. But when a spell’s caster tampers with something like that, they always take a risk. It might be all sealed up once it’s cast, but when you expose it to the power that made it in the first place, it becomes... soft, again. Malleable. And you said she was interrupted?”  
  
“I knocked over something so it fell in the circle she was using for the spell; the whole thing collapsed. Then Dean was free and... nothing seemed different between us.”  
  
But, Sam remembered suddenly, things  _had_  been different in the weeks and months afterwards. Nothing they had thought significant after everything they had gone through, but the expression on Missouri’s face was making him think maybe they had missed something important.  
  
Missouri pursed her lips. “That’s just not right. Sit still for a moment while I get a good look at you.”  
  
Sam, who hadn’t been moving around anyway, made a conscious effort to hold absolutely still. It was odd to feel like he was being stared at so intently by someone whose gaze was actually a little soft and out of focus. After a moment, Missouri blinked a few times and sighed deeply.  
  
“What is it?” Sam asked nervously.  
  
“It must have been awful in that church. The life you’d led and all the pain it’d brought you. To have the weight of the world on your shoulders and be so alone, finding out there are worse things than loneliness. Then things were better, you had a chance, and Dean, and to be on the verge of losing  _everything_... I can’t imagine the kind of panic you must have felt.”  
  
“Missouri, what are you  _talking_  about? Illchester was more than half a year ago. What happened there is long over with.”  
  
“Sam.” Her look was sympathetic; she leaned in and rested one hand on his knee. “You breaking that circle when Lilith was interacting with the curse... it was destroyed.”  
  
“No, no it wasn’t. I can absolutely  _promise_  you that whatever else might have happened, the curse was still intact.  _Is_  still intact. I can  _feel_  Dean even  _now_ , Missouri!”  
  
“Oh, you’re still cursed. I’m not denying that. But the truth is all over you’re aura. It’s not Lilith’s curse anymore, Sam, it’s yours.”  
  
Sam stared at her for a moment, the words not really making any sense. “Mine? What are you talking about; how can it be  _mine_? I’m not any kind of witch; the only things I can cast are little, basic stuff. With drawings, and directions. I wouldn’t even know how to  _start_  casting something like this. And why would I curse  _myself_?! Do you remember what this curse does?!”  
  
Missouri waved an impatient hand. “Calm down, Sam. I didn’t say you did it on purpose.”  
  
Sam slumped back into the sofa. “I don’t understand what you mean.” He seemed to be saying that a lot lately.  
  
“What were you thinking about, when Lilith had Dean trapped in the spell circle and was trying to take the curse from him?” she asked gently.  
  
It was the gentleness that really scared Sam. Missouri had been a lot of things to him at different times: family friend, mentor, confidant, ally, but she had played all roles with a certain air of tart brusqueness that had been comforting in its familiarity and expectation. For her to be gentle with him now... Sam felt cold sweat spring up along his spine.  
  
“Other than how screwed we were? I... don’t know.”  
  
But he did know. It wasn’t a hard trip down memory lane to remember the press of rough-cut stone into his back as he hung against the wall in the strangling grip of Lilith’s power. To remember watching Dean on his knees at her feet, screaming in agony. Dean fighting Hell hounds in the dark of an Indiana night. Holding his brother’s broken corpse in his arms, knowing Dean was damned. For him. The terror of losing Dean again, of  _losing_  at all in the face of Lilith’s apocalyptical plans. Clinging to Dean,  _to the curse_ , as hard as he could so she couldn’t take it...  
  
“Oh, my God.” It was as fervent a prayer as Sam had ever uttered. The spike of panic and horror at what he had done was enough to get his brother’s attention hundreds of miles away, and the vague sense of comfort he got back might have  _been_  comforting if it wasn’t heavily tinged with the cool inquisitiveness that Sam associated with the demon at Dean’s core. He shuddered hard and blocked Dean out.  
  
Missouri gave his knee another pat. “I’m going to get us some more tea. You sit right on that couch and breathe for a few minutes.”  
  
When Missouri came back, Sam had his face buried in his hands. He spoke without looking up. “How did I do this?”  
  
“You already know how you did it. Desperation and instinct. That’s the problem with power without structure; you  _wanted_  it badly enough and it... happened.”  
  
“Well, I  _want_  Dean to have the filters he needs to  _be_  Dean! I  _want_  the demons back in Hell and the fires they’re starting all over the planet stomped out! I  _want_  the angels in Hell free from whatever trap they were stupid enough to walk into so they can do something about stopping the demons from ever being a problem again! I don’t see any of that just ‘happening’ and I guarantee, Missouri, that I want some of that every bit as much as I didn’t want to lose Dean at Illchester!”  
  
Missouri waited out the tirade and spoke calmly when he was finished. “You’re strong, Sam. You have raw power and you have an advantage in certain arenas because of how some of that power is... tainted. But you aren’t up to being a wall between pure Entropy and one of its children. You can’t take on every demon in this Plane and you can’t descend into Hell and undo the trap. You were strong enough to forge a tie to Dean, to your  _brother_ , and anchor yourself so firmly to that identity that the spark of connection between the two of you is strong enough to survive the chaos that is his true nature now. It’s... impressive. I don’t think the original spell you carried when you showed up here last year would have stood up to it.”  
  
“That’s fantastic, Missouri. That’s just... fucking wonderful. I’m just strong and stupid enough to have damned the world.”  
  
“You watch your tongue with me, boy,” she snapped. “There’s no problem you have that’s gonna be made better by a lack of manners. Certainly not under my roof.”  
  
Sam nodded in apology and picked up his tea, the cold dampness of the glass feeling good against his skin; a concrete anchor to a reality that seemed to be spinning out of his control, or even comprehension. He licked his lips. “I guess... maybe there are some changes in the curse. Little things, I can feel more of him. More emotion, I think? When I try anyway, or when he reaches out. And how it affects me after I... we, um--”  
  
“I know how it works, Sam. Your recreation was done instinctively and in some panic. Probably kind of like blasting a fire hose into a china shop. I would expect a little variation.”  
  
“But if it’s mine, if I made it... if it’s the only thing keeping Dean here now, can’t I just break it?”  
  
“If you can wrap your head around it the right way, you should be able to dismantle it.” Missouri took a sip of her tea.  
  
“Okay. Just... okay then. I can release Dean, he’ll go back to Hell. But he says that would make him happy, so... that’s okay too. Then I can work on freeing the angels myself. When I do that, they won’t have a reason to hurt Dean, and they can do something about the demons. Something  _permanent_.”  
  
Missouri set her glass down on a crocheted coaster and gave Sam a frank look. “This won’t be that easy, you know. You hardly have a grasp of basic skills, now you’re talking about doing something very specific. This isn’t going to be something you can do in a day, Sam.”  
  
“What about in a week?” He smiled without humor. “Because I only have about three before I have to find Dean again, and from what he said, by then there might not be a lot of Dean left to find.”

  
~~~~~

 

Sitting on the neatly made bed in Missouri’s guest room, Sam called Bobby with the latest update. Bobby didn’t have a lot to say, just repeated ‘Jesus,’ a lot, promised to keep an ear out for anything useful and directed Sam to call if there was anything he could do to help.  
  
Even though it was a lost cause, he tried to call Dean too. To explain the spike that had gotten Dean’s attention if nothing else. But like he expected, the call went to voicemail. Sam hung up without leaving a message his brother would never be able to check anyway.  
  
Psychic boot camp with Missouri was even less fun the second time around than it had been the first. She called his progress deplorable from the last time she had given instructions and made him start over with the very foundations she had tried to show him the first time.  
  
“I already know all of this,” Sam insisted.  
  
Missouri’s look was highly unimpressed. “Know all of this or  _heard_  all of this? With the amount of time you’ve had to practice what I showed you, there’s no excuse to still be fumbling around with the fundamentals like you are. It’s been almost a year, Sam, and you still can’t find your own aura with both hands and a map?”  
  
“I’ve been a little distracted.” Sam rubbed at his temple, trying to ease the headache that he could feel building right behind the bone.  
  
“We make time for the important things, Samuel.”  
  
Sam started to snap back at her about time and things that were important, but the glint in her eye told him it was unwise. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I’ve been trying.”  
  
“Well, now let’s try harder. You need to push all of the distractions from your mind. All the pressure you’re feeling, everything with Dean, and focus now.”  
  
Sam drew in a deep breath, seven years of isolation and a year practicing meditation had given him the tools to get that far at least. When he felt he was as centered as he could get, he looked up to meet her eyes.  
  
Missouri squinted, and Sam had that bug-under-the-microscope feeling again, but then she nodded approvingly. “Let’s get started.”

  
~~~~~

 

When the alarm on his cell phone went off seven days later, Sam groaned and considered just going back to sleep. He knew he would regret it later, though, so he stretched, rolled out of bed and shuffled to the bathroom. Then he padded down the stairs and let himself out, sitting on the front steps to lace his sneakers on in the cool, pre-dawn air. Sunrise wouldn’t be for another half hour, but he preferred to run at this time of day. There was a sense of stillness and patience he found calming to his nerves. He wasn’t having nightmares, but there was a coil of uneasiness that lingered with him whenever he didn’t consciously force it aside, and his nerves these days needed all the calming they could get.  
  
The first few days, he had followed his usual routine of flipping on a radio while he got ready for the day, but each morning the news was worse. Fires and earthquakes, people missing, sinkholes. A cruise ship that vanished for a week, only to be found drifting with nothing aboard but bloodstains. Sam was already solving every problem he could, the other demons would have to wait their turn. After that, he did his ablutions in silence, finding better concentration by simply tuning out everything he couldn’t fix.  
  
While he ran, he practiced some of the exercises Missouri had drilled into him over the course of a week spent under her demanding tutelage. The silent streets and houses drifted past almost unnoticed as he concentrated on the pulse of his own heart and the rhythmic pound of his footsteps on the broken concrete of the sidewalks. He stumbled once, and regained his balance to find himself in front of a house that’s broad windows and pale siding were too familiar for peace of mind. The Winchester family home, back when they had things like that, looked exactly as Sam remembered from his last visit. That visit was more than a decade in the past, when he and Dean had been on the road tracking their father and had confronted a poltergeist in its walls. A poltergeist... and maybe something more. Sam wiped sweat from his face and panted while he looked the place over, considering. He gave a quick glance around, then walked across the lawn until he was somewhat shielded from casual sight by the heavy growth of the bushes. Feeling stupid, but still curious, Sam placed one palm firmly against the siding and closed his eyes. He used his new lessons to try and open himself a little to... whatever. If he could have ever used some maternal guidance in his life, it was certainly now. When he felt nothing but the breeze against his skin, Sam wasn’t certain whether he was disappointed or relieved.  
  
The rest of the jog was uneventful and he let himself back into Missouri’s house almost an hour later to be greeted with the mouthwatering smells of eggs and sausage.  
  
“Did you have a nice run?”  
  
Sam nodded around the glass of water he was downing.  
  
“Good. Go get cleaned up and then tuck in. Today we start the serious work.”

  
~~~~~

 

Another week of mind-rending instruction and iron discipline found Sam sitting cross-legged in Missouri’s living room. Rain pounded on the roof and heavy drapes blocked out even the wan sunlight occasionally managing to make it through the overcast sky. Candles melted in holders on the table beside him. Balancing on the precarious edge of new skills and hard lessons, their steady, golden light was almost more distraction that aid.  
  
“So, that’s it then?” Sam held his hands out in front of himself, staring at the shimmering length wrapped around his fingers resembling nothing so much as a silken drapery cord. It was a shifting gray color, like living smoke with a thin tracery of black overlay that reminded him of the mark on Dean’s hip. It felt silky and light against his skin. One end led back towards himself to vanish into the haze he saw around his body when he glanced down, the other end faded off into the distance.  
  
Missouri sat a few feet in front of him, surrounded by her own hazy aura. There were things Sam could see in it, shades and patterns of color and light, all with their own meanings. But Sam didn’t know how to read them, and couldn’t have cared less at that moment. He was holding his fate literally in his hands and he had no room for anything else.  
  
“Missouri?”  
  
She was staring at his hands intently, gaze flickering as she inspected things Sam couldn’t begin to imagine before giving a slow nod. “I think so. Does it feel right?”  
  
Sam grimaced. “It feels like... I don’t know. It’s wrapped all around me.  _Of_  me.”  
  
He gave a slight, experimental tug and gasped at the strangling sensation that tightened around him. Far, far away, Sam felt that quiet corner of his mind he thought of as Dean’s stir. But it wasn’t just in his mind he felt it; it thrummed beneath his fingertips in the silvery cord as a distant sense of concern flooded his awareness.  
  
“ _Sam._ ” Missouri’s tone was sharp.  
  
“I’m... fine. This is it. I’m sure.”  
  
She scowled. “Well, whatever you just did, don’t do it again. You almost stopped your heart. Don’t be playing with it, just sever it.”  
  
He gave her a helpless look. “How?”  
  
“Imagine it snapping,” Missouri said impatiently.  
  
“Just imagine it? That’s all?”  
  
“You use your visualizations as a crutch. It’s lazy and unskilled, but we didn’t have time to train you up any better. You’ve got it pinned down in your mind now, that’s why you can see it in your hands. Just... break it. But for Heaven’s sake, don’t go yanking on it!”  
  
“Heaven’s sake,” Sam echoed with grim humor.  
  
“Sam,” her voice was firm when she spoke again, “it’s time. It’s taken us two weeks to get you here. But this is still way beyond your skill level right now; you should still be learning about theory and drawing pictures of boxes in crayon for visual exercise. I’ve used every shortcut I could think up to help you do this, but it’s not dependable and what you see now might take us another two weeks for you to grasp again. We’re lucky you’ve managed it at all. If you’re going to do this, now’s the time.”  
  
Sam nodded, but didn’t trust himself to speak again. Dean was with him now, both  _Dean_  and  _other_. He didn’t try and stem the channel between them and through it he could feel curiosity, regret and... love. Dean believed in him, believed that Sam could save them both. Sam gripped tight to the shining rope in his hand. He summoned all of the determination, will and strength that had carried him through the hurdles of his troubled life and channeled all of it into one single thought:  _break_.

 

** Chapter Nine **

Well I dream you, constant stranger  
With your best bloods and your anger  
You say, "Mother do you claim me?"  
My beloved, do you blame me?  
                           ~Three Hits, Indigo Girls

“Get up, Sam.”  
  
Sam groaned and curled up tighter. The pounding ache in his head was a match for the nausea in his stomach and the grinding pain in his eyes. He opened them a crack and was immediately sorry.  
  
“Light...” he mumbled.  
  
“I’ve only cracked the drapes.” Missouri’s voice was tart, but not without a trace of sympathy. “You need to sit up, swallow this and at least try to get on the sofa. It’s going on seven o’clock and my momma taught me it was bad manners to leave guests passed out on the floor. Gives a woman a reputation.”  
  
The time didn’t seem right; it had barely been three when they had started the last session.  
  
Insistent hands pulling at his shoulders didn’t seem to be going anywhere, and after two weeks of following orders, Sam’s body tried to respond to her instinctively anyway. With some mutual struggle, he felt the carved wood of the sofa dig into his back and slumped there, hoping she would be pleased enough to leave.  
  
Hard tablets were pressed into one of his hands. “Swallow those.”  
  
Sam was still thinking about it when she muttered something he couldn’t quite make out and then the tablets were being forced into his mouth. They tasted vile, but before he could decide to swallow or spit them out, a straw was pressed between his lips and the decision was easy. Water, blessedly cool, eased the dryness in his mouth and throat.  
  
“What happened?” Sam managed after a few more moments of recovery. He tried opening his eyes again and had a little more success at making out a blurry, dark figure off to his right. There was a hesitation that Sam found ominous even in his dazed state. “Missouri?”  
  
“I’m not sure,” she finally replied. “As much of yourself as you poured into trying to break that thing, it should have snapped like a dry twig.”  
  
“It didn’t?” He knew the answer before she spoke, he could still feel the link in his mind. Dormant, but there. Sam swore tiredly and let her prod him up onto the couch.  
  
“What’s wrong with me?” he managed muzzily as he curled onto the soft cushions.  
  
“Backlash,” she answered shortly. “You took a nasty blow of your own medicine. I let you lay on the floor awhile while I checked you over and gave you a chance to pull yourself out of it. I don’t see any real damage done, just singed a little and probably hurts like a wicked punch. You’ll be better in the morning.”  
  
“Floor?” was the most articulate he could manage.  
  
She snorted. “I’m a little old lady, Samuel. Do you see me dragging your deadweight around anywhere?”  
  
Something soft and woven was draped over him and Sam was finding it very hard to stay awake. “What about the curse?”  
  
A firm hand tucked a pillow under his head and he heard the rustle of curtains before the room returned to blessed darkness.  
  
“You get some sleep and let me ponder on that tonight. Tomorrow is another day, Sam.”  
  
 _Yes_ , Sam thought before surrendering totally to the promise of pain-free sleep,  _but how many tomorrows are left?_

  
~~~~~

 

Sam woke up the next morning feeling like he had the worst hangover of his life. Missouri, though he could hear her bustling around in the kitchen, was kind enough to leave him alone while he gratefully swallowed the Tylenol and water she had left out, then staggered upstairs to take a long shower.  
  
Feeling marginally more human afterwards, he headed back down to figure out what exactly had gone wrong.  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“What do you mean, ‘you don’t know’?” Sam demanded over eggs and toast. “I came here because you’re supposed to be an expert on this stuff!”  
  
She met his scowl with a stern look. “You came here because you didn’t have anywhere else to go and don’t you even try and tell me otherwise. As for what went wrong... you looked like you did everything right. A little slipshod and fumbling, but that’s experience and time.”  
  
Sam drew a deep breath. “Okay then, so... try again?”  
  
Missouri looked pensive. “How long before you have to leave?”  
  
“I can feel it now, but probably about a week. Three is about the most I can do and it’s already been two. I can’t let it go much longer than that. I mean, I can  _survive_  longer, but the further it goes, the more of my symptoms Dean feels. I don’t know how much of  _Dean_  is still left, and I don’t want to give the demon a reason to decide to come find me. I’m just hoping that he’s still aware enough to remember there’s a reason he has to stay put.” Sam cleared the table and started sliding plates into the dishwasher. “I can theoretically come back, but I don’t know. I just have no idea what I’m going to find when I go looking for him.” The cool curiosity he had felt the last time he brushed Dean’s mind had not been a good sign. “Going there and coming back, that’s almost another five days. I think there’s been a lot more decay than he expected in even just the past two weeks and every day is just another step closer to... disaster. There has to be something else we can try.”  
  
Missouri looked pensive. “By everything I know, that curse should have snapped like cheap thread with everything you sent at it. It’s  _your_  spell,  _obviously_  your work. I need to think about this.”  
  
Sam crossed his arms. “Can you think fast?”  
  
“You have somewhere to be?” she asked tartly.  
  
“ _Missouri_.”  
  
She waved him away. “Go practice. I need a little time.”

  
~~~~~

 

The door to his room creaked open in the middle of the night and Sam was instantly awake. He lay frozen, and then realized he could feel who was standing in the doorway even before she spoke. He didn’t know why he was surprised, it was her house after all.  
  
“Sam.”  
  
“Missouri?” He sat up and shoved the covers off. “What’s wrong?”  
  
Even in the dim light from the hall at her back, he could see her grim expression. “What color was the curse?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“The curse,” she repeated impatiently. “What color was it? Sleep addled your ears?”  
  
Not his ears, but Sam thought his brain might need a little more time to catch up. “Uh, it was... gray. Kind of silvery with black on it. Is that bad?”  
  
Missouri swore tiredly.  
  
Sam, alarmed at the middle-of-the-night wake up, was now almost panicked. “ _What?_ ”  
  
“That silvery gray color remind you of anything?”  
  
Sam frowned, still feeling like he had cobwebs in his head. “Remind me of--” He reached out and turned the bedside lamp on with a click, Missouri’s weary stare reminding him of other eyes. Dean in the grocery store, the vivid green drowning under a gray tide. The ruins of a bedroom, facing a stranger in his brother’s skin. “Entropy? The gray is Entropy?”  
  
“I think so. I’ve been talking to some people. People who aren’t interested in being involved with this, mind you, but we have a theory. Come downstairs, I’ll put the coffee on.”

  
~~~~~

 

Sam swallowed his coffee faster than prudent and knew he would pay for it later, but he felt a desperate need to be more awake to make sense of what Missouri was telling him.  
  
“So what you’re saying is that even though I’m the caster and it’s my curse, Dean’s entropy has...  _infected_ it somehow? And that’s why it won’t break?” Sam rubbed his eyes. “How does that even make sense? If anything, I would think that would... I don’t know, destroy it maybe?”  
  
Missouri refilled his coffee cup and folded her arms across her chest. “That would have been my thought too, but it’s not just destruction, it’s chaos. And this is pretty damn chaotic.”  
  
“It’s interested in me,” Sam softly echoed something Dean had told him in the desert."  
  
“I didn’t quite catch that, Sam.”  
  
He sighed. “I said it’s interested in me. That’s why Dean said I’m not affected by the demon. It’s what he said when I asked him why when his aura was warping the world around him, things like his clothes weren’t ruined too. This tie between us, Dean’s feelings towards me, the demon is... I don’t know. I mean, _he’s_  the demon, and he’s my brother, and even though he should be losing all of that as his filters fail, he thinks that the curse is kind of... underlining it? Letting the demon feel and respond to things in a way it shouldn’t while it’s trapped on this Plane. It’s interested in me, and in not hurting me. And things that I value, or maybe have deep impressions of, it might keep... safe, for longer. He didn’t know.  _No one_  seems to know.”  
  
“No one could, Sam. Not many people have ever heard of an Entropic demon, and there’s never been one here before. All anyone has is speculation.”  
  
“And all the speculation’s bad,” Sam agreed with grim humor. “So I guess it’s really not that surprising that it’s got its tendrils in the very thing that ties us together. Now the question is, how do I make it let go?”  
  
Missouri pursed her lips. “If it’s still Dean, maybe you can just explain to him what’s going on and he can... pull back?”  
  
“That’s a pretty big if at this point, I think,” Sam sighed. “Usually, I have some sense of him in my mind. It used to get stronger when the curse started, um, pulling on me, but since Illchester it’s more or less constant. It’s been feeling weird for awhile, though, and the last few days... the feeling is still there, but it’s not Dean on the other end. I don’t know how else to describe it.”  
  
“I think I get the picture, Sam”  
  
“You don’t!” Sam hurled the coffee cup across the room where it exploded into a thousand shards against the edge of the counter. He stared hard at the mess of shattered porcelain and hot coffee. “You have no idea what it’s like in his mind,” he said in a low, tight voice. “You can’t even  _imagine_. And this is while he’s still  _unraveling_. What the hell is it going to be like when there’s nothing of Dean left, and all I have on the other end of this is the  _demon?_ ”  
  
Missouri shifted from where she was leaning against the other end of the counter.  
  
“Those cups belonged to my momma,” she said in an even voice.  
  
Sam buried his face in his hands. “I’m sorry. I’ll... get you a new one.”  
  
“Some things you can’t just replace.”  
  
He didn’t say anything.  
  
Her voice was gentler when she spoke again. “Some things you can’t just fix. You have to accept them for what they are and move on.”  
  
“What if you can’t?” Sam asked through his fingers. He looked up to meet her level gaze. “What if what’s broken isn’t something you can move on with? We’re not just talking about me, or Dean, here, but the entire world.”  
  
She didn’t say anything, but the glance she gave to the shattered coffee cup was answer enough.

  
~~~~~

 

Sam jogged up the white wooden steps of Missouri’s front porch around five that afternoon. He grabbed his folded laundry off the washing machine and stuffed it back in his duffle bag along with the usual assortment of crap he carried. Dropping it off by the front door, he headed for the kitchen just in time to run into Missouri walking in from the garage. She was covered in dust and dirt and wearing an extremely unflattering pair of cut-off sweatpants and a t-shirt encouraging participation in a blood drive. Sam didn’t dare comment on it, though.  
  
“You find something suitably junky?” she demanded to know.  
  
“Yeah. I got the car, brought in some dinner, ran some errands. Think I’m good to go.”  
  
She pushed past him and walked to where she could see the street in front of her house. Sam didn’t miss her expression of distaste.  
  
“Are you sure that thing will even get you there?”  
  
Sam gave her a tired smile. “It’s mechanically sound. Doesn’t look good, but that wasn’t what I was after.”  
  
“Certainly no one will look twice at you in that,” she snorted. “I’ve got the garage as cleaned out as it’s going to get. Go ahead and finish up while I wash some of this dirt off.”  
  
Rolling the garage door down on the Impala was strange for Sam. She was only a car, but he had never done anything like this without her. Hell, more than half his childhood had been spent strapped into her backseat glaring resentfully at the back of his father’s head. Even when he had locked himself away for seven years, his last sight had been of Bobby driving her away. So when he had thought about the car that Dean had loved more than any woman, she was always out on the open road somewhere. Undamaged by the cascading events that had ripped apart their lives.  
  
Storing her away felt criminal, but at least in Missouri’s garage she would be safe. As safe as anything else on the planet was. If Dean’s aura could reach her here then they had already lost, and if somehow they managed to actually pull off a grand miracle and Dean was aware enough to wonder where she was, well, Sam would know exactly where to find her.  
  
Having said his farewells, Sam turned his attention to his new ride. The battered old Volvo wouldn’t be winning any glamour shots, but it was reliable and unremarkable. Sam didn’t have time to construct a false bottom for the trunk, but had settled for transferring what he considered essential of the Impala’s arsenal, then covered it with an assortment of blankets and more usual trunk items: a jack, some camping gear and a crate of bottled water.  
  
Back in the house he did one last run through to make sure he had all of his things, then headed to the kitchen for last goodbyes.  
  
“Stay long enough to eat?” Missouri asked.  
  
Sam shook his head. “I can eat in the car.”  
  
He held out one hand and they could both see the fine tremors that ran through it.  
  
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay to drive?”  
  
“I have to be. What are my options?” he asked wryly. “I can’t walk, and I wouldn’t bring anyone else near Dean until I know what kind of state he’s in. Besides, I’m motivated.” Fire was burning through his body and only one thing would quench it. He cared less for Dean’s state with every minute that passed, everything else starting to fade against the overwhelming need building in his body to taste the power in his brother’s blood.  
  
Missouri pressed a wrapped sandwich into his hand and Sam could see the concern in her dark eyes. He wanted to reassure her, but it would be a lie and he knew she wouldn’t appreciate the effort.  
  
“Bend down here.”  
  
Puzzled, he did. She grabbed his shoulder and pressed a kiss to his forehead. Where her lips brushed his skin, he felt an odd warmth and the building inferno died back a bit, leaving him more clarity in its wake. She let him go and he stood back up slowly, a question in his eyes.  
  
“A gift, for luck,” she said tightly. “It won’t last long, but hopefully long enough to get you there in once piece. I’m fond of this world, Samuel Winchester, the good parts and the bad. It might need a spring cleaning now and then, but I think I prefer it unconquered by minions of Hell.”  
  
“I’ll do my best,” he promised.  
  
“See that you do,” she said tartly.

 

** Chapter Ten **

Like lesser birds on the four winds, yeah  
Like silver scrapes in May  
Now the sands become a crust  
And most of you have gone away.  
                                ~Astronomy, Blue Oyster Cult

The remote stretch of the Sonoma where Sam had left Dean was not as he remembered. As he had imagined maybe, but not as he remembered. The parking lot and the barely visible road that led to it were still where they had been, but everything else...  
  
Cresting dunes of golden sand carved through the landscape. After a momentary loss, Sam hiked up one to see how far the change went, but it was a frozen sea of sand as far as he could see. All of the scrub and cracked dirt had been consumed by the new terrain. It was as beautiful as he had thought it would be, and chilling in a way that had nothing to do with the weather. Also desolate, and empty.  
  
There was no sign of his brother. Except the obvious.  
  
“Dean!” Sam yelled, from the parking lot and from the top of the dune, wanting to go seeking him and yet worried about getting lost if Dean didn’t show up. As the hours passed, Sam called for his brother until his voice was hoarse. He pressed against the link in his mind, but Dean felt distant, and cold. Sam couldn’t pinpoint him any better than that. His hands were shaking so badly he spilled half of the water he tried to drink on himself and paced the parking lot restlessly, not knowing what to do. Finally, with the sun starting to sink behind the sand, he dragged the tarp and the sleeping bag from the trunk, made sure he had a compass, grabbed a few bottles of water and trudged out into the evening. If Dean came on him in the night, he didn’t want him anywhere near the car. Not until he was sure it was safe. Sam walked a mile in the dry, fading heat. Like the last night he had spent in the desert, the sky was cloudless and filled with glittering stars such that Sam had seldom seen in his life. With his bedding spread out and his brother missing, Sam forced himself to try and find sleep, but it was elusive.  
  
He must have dozed off at some point, because he woke up to the smell of crushed vegetation and dry earth. It was still dark and the air was completely motionless. Memory flooded in and he pushed himself up slowly. Sometime in his sleep he had rolled off the tarp, but instead of sand underneath, he was sitting on a thick carpet of green grass.  
  
It had definitely not been there when he had settled down. Sam didn’t need the link in his mind to know that Dean was nearby. He scooted back onto the tarp and almost jumped out of his skin at a touch on his shoulder.  
  
“Dean,” he gasped in relief, his body knowing who it was without any help from his higher functions. Sam could already feel the storm of Dean’s truest nature hovering at the edges of his consciousness, and he fumbled blindly for the knife strapped to his leg, needing the taste of Dean’s blood more than he needed air. The blade slid free and Sam turned, then his thoughts ground to a halt, but not from the effects of the curse. Kneeling on the grass behind him was the desiccated husk of a man. Dry, parched skin was stretched over knobby, cracked bones and thin wisps of hair still rooted in discolored flesh that clung stubbornly to an almost bare skull.  
  
“No, no...” Sam whispered in a harsh, rapid breath, because the curse was relentless. His body didn’t care about what Dean looked like, only about what was in his veins. Even when he didn’t appear to have any. Sam’s laugh was a little hysterical, but he could barely even flinch back when fingers that were as much withered muscle and tendon as skin and bone brushed over his jaw line in a curious gesture. He wanted the touch, wanted  _more_  of it. He sent desperation through the link between them, but it was like screaming into a void. There was nothing in what he felt from that link that reassured him his brother was anywhere to be found. The skull was... watching him; a damp glistening in the eye sockets that Sam hadn’t noticed before.  
  
The wind shifted and carried with it the powerful odor of decay.  
  
Dean had told Sam repeatedly that he was possessing his own corpse, that his mimicry of life was exactly that -- a mimicry. Sam had never understood the truth of that before as strongly as in that instant. And he was deeply, deeply sorry that he did.  
  
The withered husk of his brother’s body moved with more alacrity than anything that dry and broken should have been able to manage. It seemed to gaze at Sam for a moment while Sam’s heart pounded so hard it threatened to burst from his chest, then the head turned and all of Sam’s attention was drawn to a new scent on the still air. Blood.  
  
Dean’s blood.  
  
Sam’s eyes were riveted to a small tear in the desiccated skin stretched over the clearly visible bones of his brother’s arm. Even under starlight, what seeped from that tear didn’t quite look like blood, thick and too viscous as it slowly oozed out over dirty flesh, but the fire in Sam’s body didn’t care. Without conscious decision, he crushed the corpse down into the grass, hands rough against the waxy, leathered skin, and closed his mouth over the wound. The first taste hit his tongue like lightning and his entire world narrowed down to that one point. He swallowed; every drop easing one kind of fire and building into another. Sam kept his eyes tightly closed. With chaos howling on the edges of his mind and the rising need in his body, he maintained just enough self-possession to wish desperately for the blackout of his senses that sometime struck him when he had let the curse run this long before quenching it. His sanity had already survived more than should have been possible in his life, but Sam thought this might be the last straw. Under his hands, it felt like the skeletal frame he gripped was almost more... substantial, and the blood he licked from withered skin ran easier over his tongue. The corpse beneath him moved, one bony hand gripping at his shoulder and Sam heard himself whimper, needing more than a glancing touch through cloth.  
  
He was grateful when a sweeping darkness closed in on him, stealing all conscious awareness from his thoughts.

  
~~~~~

 

Wincing against the harshness of sunlight, even filtered through something, Sam smacked his lips a few times and grimaced, awareness coming slowly back to him. His mouth tasted like dry grit and death. Spitting a few times didn’t do anything but make it painfully clear just how badly he needed some water. And a toothbrush. He was lying under what felt like a tarp and he recognized the blue nylon of his sleeping bag just a few inches from his eye. Heat was baking through the plastic and he seemed to be naked. Sam frowned and shifted, then swore. A certain familiar tenderness filled in some of the gaps in his memory. He remembered he had been looking for Dean... and apparently found him. But he didn’t remember the encounter. Not remembering happened sometimes, when he had pushed himself so close to the edge that he was in danger, but he didn’t think he had been that bad off. And even if he had been, he should have remembered  _finding_  Dean. He didn’t appreciate the discomfort either; he and Dean had an understanding about that. Or at least they  _had_.  
  
With a sigh, Sam shoved the plastic of the tarp aside and sat up, swearing. A few feet away, Dean was sitting, eyes closed and naked, on a patch of dry and withered grass. That much bare skin in the unforgiving glare of the sun would leave a wicked burn, but Sam supposed Dean didn’t have to worry about things like that. Sand dunes towered over them, the serpentine sway of their wind-carved crests like something from a dream.  
  
A bad dream.  
  
Sam’s eyes flew wide and locked onto Dean’s face; in that instant, memory of the night before flooded back in. Sam drew a harsh, shuddering breath in remembered horror. His stomach turned over and he staggered a few feet away, golden sand burning the bare soles of his feet, and vomited.  
  
When he slowly straightened again, Dean was watching him. His eyes were green, but the expression in them did nothing to calm down the alarm singing in Sam’s mind.  
  
“Hey, Sam. You bring my car?”  
  
“You said not to,” Sam answered carefully. Grateful to have Dean at least  _looking_  like Dean again. “Remember?”  
  
“Oh. Yeah.” Dean’s tone was distant, almost like he was dreaming. Sam cautiously reached for Dean with his mind. He wasn’t rebuffed, but he wasn’t welcomed either. There was just... nothing. Sam shuddered and shut it down again.  
  
Sam struggled against an impulse to grab handfuls of sand and scrub himself down with their grit, erasing what he could remember of the corpse’s touch the previous night. He spotted his clothes nearby and pulled them on, barely bothering to shake the sand off first. In retrospect, he assumed that what he thought he had felt before blacking out had been Dean’s body... reforming. He hoped it was, because he really didn’t think he was going to cope well if he took a shower later and found flakes of his brother’s corpse stuck to him along with the dirt and other debris.  
  
“Dean, what happened...” Sam trailed off and motioned to the desert around them that was decidedly out of place in the southwest.  
  
The demon glanced around, then shrugged with disinterest. He stood up and started to walk away. Sam crammed his feet into his shoes and scrambled to follow.  
  
“Wait! Dean, wait!”  
  
Dean paused and turned to watch him, head cocked with curiosity.  
  
“We need to talk. I need your help. Can you... come back and sit down for a few minutes?”  
  
When Dean showed no signs of moving, Sam grabbed his wrist and pulled gently. The demon didn’t resist and let himself be towed back to the tarp and the sleeping bag. Sam could already feel the sun baking into his skin, but certainly wasn’t going to risk losing Dean to jog back to the car for sunscreen. He tugged until Dean was seated obediently next to him, still watching Sam with a look of interest. Sam rinsed his mouth out with one of his water bottles, downed another one, and started talking.  
  
The next two hours were easily some of the most frustrating of Sam’s life. Sometimes the demon seemed to be Dean, and sometimes it was completely not. Using his mind, Sam tried to draw out what remained of his brother in the spiraling chaos he sensed through their link. He explained repeatedly about the Entropy and the curse, how all Dean needed to do was pull back and he could be free. He begged, he ordered, he pleaded -- to no avail. Around the end of the first hour, when Sam was about to try screaming, the demon reached out and touched one of Sam’s hands, looking fascinated. Sam glanced down to see what was so interesting and noted nothing but the reddening of what would no doubt be an epic sunburn. On his personal list of ways to die, skin cancer did not get a lot of regard.  
  
“ _Dean_.” He snapped his fingers to refocus his brother on what he was trying to explain. The demon sighed but obligingly looked back up.  
  
Sam barely noticed a few minutes later when a cloud bank rolled slowly in, but the sudden cool breeze was a welcome relief from the oppressive and still heat of desert air that had been roasting him alive. He drained his last water bottle and started his explanation again.  
  
After another round, the demon sighed. “I understand, Sam.”  
  
He sounded as close to  _Dean_  as Sam had yet heard.  
  
Sam’s eyes flew wide. “Then you’ll do it?”  
  
Dean’s brows furrowed; he looked almost confused. “Do... no.”  
  
“ _Why not?_ ” Sam gaped. “This is exactly what we wanted! You’ll be free; or at least free once I finish our quest. And you won’t have to suffer here, or hurt anyone. Just pull back so I can snap the freaking curse!”  
  
Dean’s jaw set stubbornly. Sam recognized the expression as one of Dean’s most recalcitrant and his heart sank.  
  
“Dean, I don’t understand. Why not?”  
  
But Dean didn’t look like he was listening anymore. His attention was fixed on the sand streaming off of one of the crests to their left.  
  
Sam buried his face in his hands. He’d tried everything he could think of to explain the problem to the demon his brother was becoming. He’d even drawn a freaking picture in the sand. It didn’t seem to be a comprehension problem, though Sam had no idea how much the demon really understood, but it seemed to be deliberately... refusing.  
  
“You just hurt in this world,” Sam mumbled between his fingers. “You just hurt here, and you hurt the world by being here. I don’t understand why you won’t let me free you. You said this was what you wanted.” He felt tears of frustration well up and did nothing to stop them.  
  
He didn’t expect the touch on his hair and looked up, startled. Dean was only inches away. The demon ran one finger gently under his eye.  
  
“I’m just tired,” Sam confessed. “Tired and confused. I just want to help you. Why won’t you let me help you go... home?”  
  
Dean wiped his hands off and sat back. “You need me.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You need me. Here.”  
  
“I need you someplace you won’t accidentally smash the planet!” Sam snapped.  
  
“Here,” Dean insisted stubbornly.  
  
“I’m going to figure out a way to do this without your help then,” Sam warned.  
  
Dean shrugged. “Bigger problems.”  
  
“ _Dean_. You’re going to  _be_  the biggest problem!”  
  
The demon stood up and brushed sand off naked skin that showed no mark of the sun. He stretched out, then casually turned back towards the desert where he had been heading before when Sam stopped him. “Be good, Sammy.”  
  
Sam growled; irrationally irritated that of all the things Dean seemed to have lost, the hated childhood nickname had not been among them. On the other hand, it was very  _Dean_. He made no move to chase after the demon this time. Dean had made his position, mind boggling as it was, perfectly clear.  
  
The demon turned back one last time. “And take care of my car!”  
  
Then he walked out of sight into the desert, leaving Sam kneeling alone on a tarp surrounded by the shifting sands.

 

** Chapter Eleven **

Hearing only what you want to hear  
And knowing only what you've heard  
You, you're smothered in tragedy  
And you're out to save the world  
                                    ~My Friend Of Misery, Metallica

“And that’s all he said? That you needed him and to take care of his car?”  
  
“Yes,” Sam snarled, still as furious and confused three days later as he had been when it happened. Having listened to baffled reporters and sound bites of people talking about the amazing and unexplained environmental changes that had just appeared in the Sonoma, interspersed between the latest other global disasters, for the entire drive from Arizona to South Dakota had not helped his outlook. “The world is going to end, and he’s worried about the Impala. He’s a freaking Entropic demon, doesn’t even seem aware of me or what the hell I’m saying half the time, but he’s worried about his fucking car. You know what the end of the world is going to look like, Bobby? After the Rendering demons get done turning everything into rubble and human life is extinguished? It’s going to be Dean, in the Impala, cruising down empty highways, singing Metallica at the top of his lungs. Probably idly blasting rubble out of his way and barely freaking noticing that there’s  _nothing else alive on the planet!_ ”  
  
Bobby took a long sip of his beer. “Well, at least he still kinda knows you. That’s something.”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam snorted in disgust. His own beer sat untouched in front of him, and even the peaceful evening breeze through the screen door of Bobby’s kitchen and the low song of summer crickets couldn’t make a dent in his mood. “He’ll probably have my corpse propped up shotgun and not even notice  _I’m dead_. Just maybe wonder about how agreeable I’ve suddenly become. If he can wonder  _anything at all_. Damn it!”  
  
“And Missouri can’t offer you any other option?”  
  
“No. She promised to keep talking to people. But things are scary enough that she says most people in her line of work aren’t feeling really talkative. Everyone is starting to get the message that big things are going down and they’re battening their hatches. Like that’s going to save anyone,” he growled.  
  
“Sometimes runnin’ is all folks can think to do. Seems to me that you’ve tried it a time or two yourself,” Bobby said pointedly, gaze level.  
  
“Yeah, and we see how well that turned out, don’t we?” Sam struggled to get control of himself again. “Fine. So unless something changes, I guess Dean is here for the long haul. I can’t do anything about that, so I’m just going to... try not to think about it, and focus on what I  _can_  do.”  
  
“The angels.”  
  
Sam nodded. “Somehow, I need to figure out how to break the barrier that’s trapping them. No barrier, no trap, and angels with a few millennia of pent up anger rise out of the Pit and kick the crap out of anything demonic they find slithering around. Hopefully, with a lot more motivation than the ones in Heaven showed when defending the Seals last year, because I really don’t think I’m going to want to live anymore if after all of this there is some kind of holy war and the demons win.  _Again_.”  
  
“The demons didn’t exactly win that little throw-down last year, Sam.”  
  
“They would have,” Sam snorted. “They shattered almost all of the Seals and were all set to go at Illchester. If it wasn’t for Dean, humanity would be bowing to a new world order by now. So if that was the best defense angels could come up with, then we might be screwed either way, no matter what I manage to cobble together for a plan.”  
  
“You said that angel told you Heaven was divided on what to do last year, though; that there was some argument going on. I don’t think we’re going to have that problem with the ones in Hell if they get loose. They have an axe to grind, and after as long as they’ve been locked up, it should be good and sharp by now. Did Dean even indicate he had any doubts about what would happen?”  
  
Sam sighed. “We never really talked about it like that. He made a deal to free them; everything else is just assumptions.”  
  
Bobby snorted. “I’ll take assumptions over certain doom.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
They sat in silence for a few minutes, brooding over circumstances. After a while, Bobby stirred and grabbed himself another bottle from the fridge, looking thoughtful. “That angel you summoned; the one who helped you out with the ingredients last year. It didn’t tell you anything useful?”  
  
“Castiel? All Castiel said was that somewhere there was a Ward that would banish all of the demons on Earth for about a century and strip them down enough that the angels in Hell would be able to help Dean again. It sounded great, but that Ward hasn’t been seen in thousands of years, Bobby! It’s as big of a quest as freeing the angels in Hell in the first place. Of the two, I might as well focus on the one that will solve the most problems.”  
  
“The one you and your brother working together on non-stop for months couldn’t even make a dent in?” Bobby’s eyebrow said everything his tone couldn’t convey.  
  
Sam scowled. “You want me to give up? You think I should be chasing a different shadow?”  
  
Bobby glanced over at the muted television on the counter where a woman was recounting a story of three school buses full of elementary school kids that had vanished in Decatur County. The morning after the disappearance, a pile of all the missing children’s clothes had been found on the playground of their school. The bright clothing was fluttering in the background of the reporter’s tense explanation of events.  
  
Neither Sam nor Bobby had any belief the kids would be seen again.  
  
“I think that an angel who has bent rules for you before, no matter what it says, wouldn’t waste it’s time or yours blathering on about things that were meaningless. Stopgap or not, what you need to buy most now is time. You’ve gone down one road as far as you can and things are only getting worse. Maybe it’s time to try something different.”

  
~~~~~

 

The following sunrise found Sam in Bobby’s barn, spray painting runes on the walls. He was doing it from memory, but had spent so much time in research putting the ritual together the first time that he felt like the symbols were indelibly seared into his brain. Sam had stayed up with Bobby almost until dawn, arguing and discussing various options and possibilities, but by the time Bobby had finally called a halt for some sleep, Sam was both exhausted and fired up. Not the best mindset for making decisions. The result of which found him grimly determined to have another chat with Castiel. He needed a couple of things clarified, and he had a request.  
  
“You don’t need all of that.”  
  
Sam had been mid-spray and gave an embarrassing yelp at the sudden voice behind him. He spun to find Castiel standing there in the barn’s filtered shadows, looking exactly as he had every other time they had met.  
  
The angel glanced over his shoulder at the wooden side of the barn and Sam felt something in the air; he turned back to see all of his tedious paintwork vanished.  
  
“All that does is attract attention, and you attract quite enough of that on your own. I asked you not to contact me again.”  
  
Sam drew a deep breath. “I know but... I have questions.”  
  
“I have already given you my position on this,” Castiel warned.  
  
“Please. Just five minutes; answer what you can and then I promise I’ll leave you alone.”  
  
“And if I say no?”  
  
Sam squared his shoulders. “I don’t think you understand just how much spray paint I can get my hands on around here.”  
  
Sam thought he saw indecision in the angel’s unreadable eyes, but after a moment, Castiel nodded once. “I may not have five minutes. Ask.”  
  
“Is freeing the angels in Hell something only Dean can do?”  
  
“I’ve already explained that I cannot help you with that.”  
  
“Right, because you can’t interfere.”  
  
“Yes. My... presence here will be noted. I should not have come, and will not again.”  
  
Sam nodded in understanding. “It’s just... I asked you for help before, to fix the filters on my brother and you said you couldn’t, and you said you couldn’t help me free the angels, but then you mentioned the Ward. I need to know more about that.”  
  
“There is little more to tell you. It was carved by human seers who begged my Father for aid. They had seen a future where there would be need and wished to harbor against it. It was lost many thousands of years ago. Not even we know where it rests now, only that it still exists.”  
  
“But according to what you said before, it was lost here somewhere, in North America; it will send all of the demons on this Plane back to Hell for a century, and... it works like the one in Illchester? Right? They’re banished because it guts their power?”  
  
“Yes. As I told you before.”  
  
“And the demons causing all the trouble here are the same demons that are interfering with the angels in Hell so they can’t help Dean. So ...if the demons are banished with that Ward, then the angels would be able to restore Dean and he would be okay?”  
  
Castiel inclined his head but said, “There is nothing wrong with your brother now, Sam. He is as he is intended to be.”  
  
Sam looked impatient. “Safe to stay in this world then?”  
  
“In all likelihood, the Ward will banish your brother as well. It sings with the eternal rules of Creation and Order, in the instant of its use should sweep anything that properly belongs to Entropy back to its proper Plane.”  
  
“Good! That’s what I want it to do, but not Dean.” Sam stared at Castiel intently. “Can you shield him from the Ward? Not... anything else. For that instant, can you protect him from being banished?”  
  
“Sam...”  
  
“This has nothing to do with getting the angels out of Hell or doing their job for them! I’m asking you to help me protect my brother. He has to finish his quest or what happened to him in the Rendering is going to be a  _cakewalk_  compared to his eternity. We didn’t cause any of this; everyone had had these plans for us since before we were born and we’re doing the best we can. I’m begging you for just one second. Just shield him from the Ward. It’s not just Dean’s best interests we’re talking about, but every soul that the demons trap!”  
  
“And leave an unshielded Entropic demon loose in the Material Plane? Do you understand what it is his presence is doing to this world? If the Ward does not send him back, I cannot banish him, Sam.  _No one_ can force him out if he won’t go on his own. You tried to break the bond that anchors him to this Plane, and against all expectation, he refused. I can make no promises on what the Entropic angels will or won’t do; they should restore his filters, but they may not. And then where would that leave this Plane? This Ward may be the only chance there will be to save this world from him, and you want me to  _protect_  him from it?”  
  
“You said yourself that unless the angels in Hell are set free, the balance will never be restored. The confusion in Heaven will continue, demons will keep crossing over, and things will just continue to get worse. Dean and I can do it, but we need a chance. Besides,” Sam added after a moment in a low voice, “if he has no filters, then the only thing to keep him here is me. I think you know that. I don’t think that ultimately he is going to do anything worse to this world than the Rendering demons will do once their century is up. Do you? Dean and I can put things right, we just need a chance. Some time to find the answer.”  
  
The angel’s face was still. Sam could feel the considering weight of blue eyes again for what felt like an eternity.  
  
“I can make no promises in this, Sam.”  
  
“But you’ll try?”  
  
“I will... consider your proposal.”  
  
“Will you let me know what you decide?”  
  
“Will it change your course of action?”  
  
Sam thought about that, then reluctantly shook his head.  
  
“Then I see no need to risk further meetings.”  
  
“And you can’t tell me anything else about the Ward other than it’s in North America and someplace... chaotic?”  
  
For an instant, Sam thought he saw something like frustration in the angel’s impassive eyes.  
  
“I’ve given you all the help I can. Trust your instincts.” A beat of hesitation. “Good luck.”

  
~~~~~

 

As meetings went, Sam had had more productive. But he had made the strongest argument he could and just had to hope now that it had been persuasive. Sam wished he knew what instinct Castiel thought he had that he was supposed to be paying attention too. All Sam was aware of feeling was a sense of panic and futility.  
  
Bobby had woken up around noon, suffering the effects of too much booze and too little sleep. Sam gave him a rundown on what he had been up to. Bobby rubbed his head while calling Sam half the names in the book for impulsive stupidity, then staggered outside to make sure his barn was still standing.  
  
When he came back in, Sam was already entrenched back in the library with a pot of coffee and a legal pad, drawing.  
  
“Do I even want to know what you’re doing now?” Bobby grumbled, helping himself to the coffee and Sam’s mug.  
  
Sam didn’t bat an eye, completely absorbed in his work. “I’m drawing what I can remember of the runes from the Ward that Castiel gave me at Illchester. Maybe I can match them to something, or find some kind of clue in them.”  
  
“How’s that going?”  
  
“Adrenaline is supposed to be good for your memory, and I had lots and lots of adrenaline in my system last time I saw it.” Sam scratched through half the sheet so hard the paper ripped, then tore off the pages and started over on a clean one.  
  
“That good, huh?”  
  
Sam glared and snatched the coffee mug back.  
  
“So you whistled up this angel... all to rehash what you already knew?”  
  
“I needed to be sure of my information if I’m going to gamble everything on this,” Sam said flatly. “I already have almost nothing to go on; I had to make sure my facts were straight.” He was aware of Bobby’s considering gaze on him, but resolutely refused to look up.  
  
“And Dean?”  
  
The pencil in Sam’s hand paused. “If I could just free the angels then... whatever happens would be okay. Dean would be off the hook and free to be... free. But this way, all I’m doing is buying some time. I need his help, Bobby. I’ll do it alone if I have to, but I’m human. I’ve got another forty years or so, at best, and Dean has advantages that I don’t. The odds of actually figuring out a way to break the barrier are a lot better with his help. And if the Ward works and the angels can restore Dean’s filters, then there’s no goddamned reason for him  _not_  to be here helping me!”  
  
“Hey,” Bobby held up one hand, “you don’t have to convince me. I just wanted to make sure I understood what the hell was going on. And... forty years? I don’t know if you’re being wildly optimistic, or selling yourself short.”  
  
“You know what they say: it’s not the years, it’s the mileage.”  
  
“Don’t I ever,” Bobby snorted, then headed back to the kitchen to find his own mug.

  
~~~~~

 

Two days of sleeping at the desk, and heaps of paper later, Sam had what he felt was a reasonable approximation of what the mini ward he had used at Illchester had looked like; its hypnotic lines and harsh angles almost mesmerizing even in his graphite representation. There was obviously a pattern to it, and equally obvious that it was nothing like Sam had ever seen before. And yet... something about it nagged at him. Something... that wasn’t coming to him.  
  
Marshaling his frustration, Sam slid the paper into Bobby’s fax machine and pulled his well-thumbed book of contacts out of his duffle bag. As he was well aware from his years as a consulting specialist for occult matters, half the trick was in knowing the answers yourself, and the other half was in knowing who to ask when you needed help.  
  
In between long hours in furtive phone calls with contacts all over the planet, Sam busied himself digging through crumbling parchments and fragmentary manuscripts, thumbing through the ancient tomes that arrived daily by mail. Bobby had no idea how much of his own money and favors Sam was blowing through, but he knew what it was doing to his phone bill. He also knew none of it would mean a damn thing if Sam wasn’t successful in his goal, so he kept the coffee on and worried about the problems he could handle – mainly, trying to keep hunters out in the field alive against overwhelming odds.  
  
“It’s Enochian!” Sam crossed the loose dirt of the junkyard grinning, an ancient looking book Bobby didn’t recognize clutched to his chest.  
  
Bobby pulled back out from under the hood of the truck he was working on and gave Sam a baffled look. “What are you on about now?”  
  
“The runes on the ward I drew -- Enochian!”  
  
“Eno -- you mean that crap Dee and Kelley dreamed up in the fifteen hundreds?  _That’s_  what’s written on your ward?” Bobby frowned. “Loses me a few bar bets,” he grunted. “We always said that language was total crap.”  
  
“No,” Sam explained patiently. “I mean --yes, but also no. It’s a variation of that, but this is older. Probably where they got most of their material from in the first place. And there’s more. I think the Ward is actually Metatron.” He motioned for Bobby to follow him back into the house. Bobby wiped his hands off on a scrap of rag and followed.  
  
“Metatron? I thought Metatron was an angel, Sam.”  
  
“No, no, look here--” Sam dropped the heavy volume he had been carrying onto the loose papers covering the desk in Bobby’s living room with a thunk that made dust fly up into the air. “There are a lot of different references to Metatron in all kinds of religious texts. Admittedly, they point in a lot of different directions, but at least some of them call Metatron The Scribe of Heaven. But according to Duvaul’s translation of what was actually an older Enochian primer, those sources that refer to Metatron as the Scribe were mistranslations in the first place. It wasn’t a title, the word was  _inscribed_ , not Scribe. So it would have been “Metatron, as inscribed by Heaven.” Now Duvaul didn’t have any idea what that meant and just mentioned it in passing, but in the Dakon transcriptions--“  
  
“The ravings of that poor beggar in Kandahar?”  
  
“Ravings, but some pretty damn accurate stuff over the years. He talked about the Apocalypse, but he  _also_ talked about what Heaven had  _inscribed_  against the coming darkness. He was talking about demons, Bobby. Talking about something humans could use to banish demons.”  
  
Sam looked intent, Bobby looked dubious.  
  
“This is interesting, Sam. But I don’t see how having a  _name_  for it gets you any closer to  _finding_  the damn thing. It’s also a little thin.”  
  
“Well, it doesn’t get me any closer by itself,” Sam admitted, then added hastily, “but if the Ward is Metatron then people know about it, Bobby! There are references, things to research. It’s a chance, and that’s a hell of a lot more than we had when looking for information about the trap in Hell. I’ll take thin, I’ll take  _anorexic_ , as long as there is  _something_  to find.” He closed the book with a satisfied thud and vanished back into the library.  
  
But within a week all of Sam’s research had gone cold and he wasn’t any closer to finding something solid on the lost Ward. Having a name and a language was interesting but ultimately, as Bobby had suggested, worthless. Sam drew the runes over and over again --on paper, on the mirror after a shower, in the condensation that gathered on the table where he set his glass-- reaching for a spark of inspiration that never showed up. Sam was starting to feel what Dean claimed to feel anytime they’d slept in the same bed for three nights, a gnawing restlessness that told him to get out and move. To do  _anything_  but sit and stare at another damn scrap of paper. But he had no place to go that was as good as the place he was, so he gritted his teeth and dug in.  
  
Still. There was something almost  _familiar_  about the runes, though Sam couldn’t say if it was the constant repetition or the genuine hint of a hidden memory.

 

** Chapter Twelve **

I wish I was a nomad, an Indian, or a saint.  
Give me walking shoes, feathered arms, and a key to heaven's gate.  
                                  ~World Falls, Indigo Girls

“That didn’t take long, I thought you were heading back down to the southwest to meet up with Dean?” Bobby frowned. Sam didn’t reply, just walked across the room and threw himself into a chair that creaked alarmingly under the sudden weight.  
  
“Did you see about the earthquake in California?” Sam asked.  
  
“Yeah,” Bobby replied cautiously. “Have to be dead to miss it. What does that have to do with you being back early?”  
  
“Nothing,” Sam sighed. “Just... something Dean said.”  
  
“You’ve only been gone two days, Sam. There’s no way you made it to the Sonoma and back.”  
  
Sam shrugged out of his flannel and leaned back in his shirtsleeves. “I didn’t have to. I pulled over at a rest stop outside of Sterling to stretch my legs for awhile. He was... waiting for me.”  
  
“In Sterling?” Bobby asked sharply. “I thought he agreed to stay in the desert. You know, away from breakable things like cities and people?”  
  
“He doesn’t think like that anymore. I don’t know how aware he is of his actions, or of even where he is now at any given time. He doesn’t talk a lot, and what he says only sometimes makes sense. It’s so fucking frustrating, Bobby! Sometimes, I feel like it’s Dean and I’m reaching him, and then his expression changes and it’s all...  _whatever_ , again.”  
  
“Did he... do anything?” Bobby’s tone was both wary and curious. He had watched the news reports on the desert and been both impressed and horrified.  
  
Sam sighed. “I managed to drag him off into the woods a ways before...” Sam shrugged and Bobby grunted in acknowledgement of what he was glossing over. “It was a pine forest, and afterwards there wasn’t a needle on a tree for fifty feet in all directions. They were still green, just all over the ground. Weird, but not a rampage of destruction.”  
  
Sam didn’t say anything about Dean’s mental landscape. There had been no indication his brother even tried to keep him out of his inner chaos this time, despite Sam’s whispered pleas, and the buffeting winds and confusion had almost felt like a psychic flaying.  
  
“You just left him there?”  
  
“No, he was gone when I was, uh, aware again. I don’t know where he went.”  
  
“Bad news for the world,” Bobby muttered.  
  
Sam snorted and stood back up, needing to shower before he got comfortable somewhere and passed out. “You can turn the television on any channel and see bad news for the world. If all Dean is doing is some casual deforestation, then I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.”

  
~~~~~

 

“Is that John’s journal?” Bobby asked across the kitchen table.  
  
Sam, wearing a healthy growth of stubble and the same clothes Bobby had seen him in for three days, nodded.  
  
“Why?” Bobby asked bluntly. “You think he wrote down some information you just happened to miss in all the years you and Dean used that thing like a Bible?”  
  
“I don’t know. It’s just... these dreams I’m having.”  
  
“I didn’t think you were sleeping at all. These aren’t like those nightmares you were having before, are they?”  
  
“I’m sleeping as much as I can, Bobby. It just feels weird in my head and it’s worse when I’m asleep, you know how the air feels right before a storm rolls in? All still and heavy?” Bobby nodded. “It’s like that, like there’s something pushing against my mind that just can’t quite reach me.”  
  
“Dean?”  
  
Sam shook his head.  
  
“No. That’s an entirely different sort of pressure,” Sam said grimly. He did have dreams he knew were flavored with his brother’s spilling nature. Dreams of chaos, and falling, and shredding winds that ripped at places he didn’t know how to protect. But as days and weeks rolled by, he was getting better at reaching out for the demon’s attention in those moments of panic, and once aware of his distress, Dean was usually obliging enough to toss him back out. Sam would wake up blinking at the ceiling, drenched in a cold sweat, but at least he  _had_  an out from those nightmares, so far. His other dreams were not quite as accommodating.  
  
“So why the journal?”  
  
“I... this is going to sound crazy--”  
  
“Because everything else around here is normal and sane,” Bobby said dryly.  
  
“Yeah,” Sam chuckled weakly. “Well, I feel like my dad is trying to tell me something.”  
  
Bobby blinked. “That is... different.”  
  
Sam closed the journal and dropped it to the table with a sigh. “I just keep seeing him. He doesn’t say anything, or signal anything, just looks at me. But I keep seeing him exactly the same and it feels _familiar_ , likes the runes feel familiar. I’m missing something, Bobby; there’s something obvious that I’m just not picking up on.”  
  
“And you think the answer is in that journal?”  
  
Sam gave the well-worn, leather-bound book on the table a dark look. “I don’t think so. I’ve been over it and over it, and it’s not like I didn’t have it practically memorized before. But I don’t know what else he would be trying to indicate.”  
  
“He left more behind than just that journal, you know.”  
  
“I know. I’m going to grab a shower and then hit the road. I ransacked his storage sheds at Scottsbluff and Elko pretty thoroughly, but maybe there’s something...”  
  
“Here’s hoping you didn’t sell whatever’s so important. If there’s anything at all.”  
  
Sam glared. “Yes, here’s hoping.”  
  
“Want company on the road?”  
  
“No.” Sam shook his head, pushing back from the table and glancing at the muted television that as usual was depicting some kind of carnage, this time in India from the looks of the surroundings. “You’ve got more than enough to handle right here.”

  
~~~~~

 

When Sam showed back up this time and walked in the back door, it wasn’t Bobby who greeted him in the kitchen, but Rufus. The hunter gave Sam’s glassy eyes and flushed cheeks a long, assessing look, then grunted and went back to twisting wires on an elaborate weapon that resembled a crossbow, though not one like Sam had ever seen.  
  
“There’s usually a rule about doing that on this table,” Sam muttered, pulling a wadded tissue out of his pocket to wipe his nose before tossing it into the trash  
  
Rufus didn’t look up from what he was working on. “We’re a little past caring about the furnishings. You find what you were looking for?”  
  
“How much do you know?” Sam asked warily, before dissolving into a coughing fit. He’d had trouble from hunters before, and only knew Rufus by casual meeting and rumor. Sam was willing to extend at least cautious trust to anyone Bobby vouched for, but Bobby wasn’t there.  
  
“I know enough to be real hopeful you dug up something on your errand. Did you?”  
  
“What are you doing here anyways? Where’s Bobby?” Sam avoided the question. He knew he had a fever again and was trying to breathe shallowly, so as not to set off another cough.  
  
“Haven’t you heard?” Rufus asked with grim humor. “I live here now. Something cremated my city. No good now unless you like fields of ash and ruins.”  
  
Sam was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Rufus gave an especially violent twist to one of the bolts. “Wasn’t your fault. Even as tangled up in this crap as you are, you didn’t sic the damn demons on us.”  
  
Footsteps on the stairs made Sam look up just in time to see Bobby enter the room.  
  
“You’re back,” he greeted Sam. “And you look like hell. You want to sit down before you fall down? And _please_  tell me you found something useful.”  
  
“Not what I was hoping for, just spiders and dust. I can’t imagine... I’ve been thinking about this all these hours on the road-- maybe you guys can come up with something. Castiel said the Ward is hidden in a place of chaos. What’s chaotic?”  
  
“Dallas traffic,” Rufus offered.  
  
“Parking lot after a football game,” Bobby suggested.  
  
Sam grabbed a bottle of juice out of the fridge and glared at them both. “ _Fate of the World_. The angel said it had to be hidden in a place of powerful chaos to prevent angels from being able to see it. I don’t think Castiel was worried about rush hour or who won the Superbowl!”  
  
“If you think traffic is only bad in rush hour down there, you haven’t been to Dallas in a while,” Rufus observed.  
  
“That’s not helpful.” Sam grimaced and fine lines creased the corners of his eyes.  
  
Bobby slid a chair out for him and Sam sat down, rubbing at his temples.  
  
“Vision?” Bobby asked.  
  
Sam shook his head. “No, it’s that pressure I was telling you about --it's still here. All the time. Gives me horrible headaches. And this cold isn't helping.”  
  
“You said there was pressure when you were dreaming,” Bobby said sharply.  
  
“It was, at first,” Sam admitted. “But the last few days, it just never really leaves. When I’m awake, when I’m asleep -- if it doesn’t let up soon I feel like something is going to break in my head.”  
  
Bobby shot Rufus a look but the other hunter was focused on his work. “What about your brother, is he... in there?”  
  
“I’m not getting anything from Dean lately. He’s there, but... not paying me attention,” Sam replied in a low voice.  
  
“Anything I can do to help?”  
  
“No. Just hand me the aspirin and let me try and get some sleep. This trip has been a waste of time we don’t have, and getting sick is just the icing on the cake. My dad, my brother, and anything else that wants to rent time in my skull is just going to have to back the hell off and let me get some real rest or I won’t be good for anything, for anyone.”

  
~~~~~

 

 _In his dream, Sam walked along a broken sidewalk. Crowds of faceless people in dark clothing pushed past him, feeling cool like mist where they brushed against his body._  
  
“Sam,” Bobby’s voice was low and tense.  
  
 _He could hear laughter and shouting, conversation, but none of the words made sense to his ears. The air was thick and still, like the pressure that had been building in his head for months, but he could smell salt like the sea was near, and the sweet scents of summer grass and decay were heavy and close all around him._  
  
“What’s wrong with him?” Rufus asked.  
  
“He was sick when he got here; it’s the fever. Don’t think it’s been long enough to be anything else. Go grab that kit I keep in the closet, and an ice pack or two. Frying his brain is the last thing we need.”  
  
 _Above him, the sky was a sea of gray, clouds spiraling around into a deep funnel like it would draw up everything around him until only the clouds were left. But not even the leaves on the trees across the street stirred, like the skyscape was something unconnected to anything else around him. Sam dismissed it with casualness only achievable in a dream. His footsteps dragged as he realized he knew this place, though it had been more than half a year since he had seen it._  
  
“Shit. Sam, I need you to wake up now.”  
  
“Is he bleeding?” Rufus’ voice was sharp.  
  
 _Sam craned his head around until he could see across the street to the park and its benches. Empty. He struggled to reach the edge of the pavement, but the press of people was relentless. The colors of the buildings and greenery were starting to go flat, like all life and color were being drained away, and the voices around him grew harsher._  
  
“It’s his nose. Not a head wound. Gimme the gauze.”  
  
 _Out of the corner of his eye, Sam caught a flash of something and his head whipped around to see shockingly red hair receding through the crowd. Sam swore and struggled harder, fighting the sea of bodies to catch up with the figure walking ahead of him. He made progress only slowly, but just before he could grab hold of the figure, his father’s voice ripped through his consciousness.  
  
Sam. _  
  
“Sam! Keep hold of him; don’t let him throw himself onto the floor.”  
  
Rufus grunted. “The floor might be a better place for him if he’s going to struggle!”  
  
 _Sam spun, shocked, but instead of his father behind him, or the crowd he had just fought his way through, he found..._  
  
“Sam!” Powerful hands shook his shoulders and Sam opened his eyes to see Bobby sitting beside him on the edge of the bed, hands tight on Sam’s shoulders and expression grim. “Are you awake now?”  
  
Sam, still half in the dream, could only stare at him blankly.  
  
“Singer,” Rufus called from the window. “You better come see this.”  
  
“I’m a little busy,” Bobby snapped.  
  
Sam struggled to a sitting position, touching his face gingerly, bemused to find cotton wads in his nostrils.  
  
“You’ve got a nosebleed.” Bobby pulled Sam’s hand away. “Leave it alone for a few minutes.”  
  
“Bobby.”  
  
“ _What?_ ”  
  
“I’m not an expert on weather in these parts, but you often get snow this time of year?”  
  
Bobby and Sam both looked up. Through the bedroom window, the junkyard was plainly visible. Trees, grass, dirt... and heavy, white flakes drifting past the window at the whimsical mercy of the late summer breeze.  
  
“It’s got to be eighty-five degrees out there,” Rufus commented.  
  
Sam didn’t need to see any more, he already knew what was happening. He struggled out of the bed and pulled his jeans on with shaking hands, ignoring his sweaty skin and the pain in his head that made his vision throb in and out of focus.  
  
“Where do you think  _you’re_  going?” Bobby demanded.  
  
“Dean,” Sam mumbled. Bobby glanced to the window then back to where Sam had finally gotten the button of his jeans through the hole and was lurching towards the door.  
  
“At least let me help make sure you don’t break your fool neck on the stairs.”

  
~~~~~

 

Lightning cracked across the sky, arcing through dark clouds that shifted across the sky in banks and layers. Grass under his back was soft on his naked skin and the pale wildflowers that dotted the landscape smelled like spring to Sam’s senses. Snow was still drifting down, but it melted when it touched his skin, or the ground, even though it suffered no harm by the warm air currents it floated on. The pinpricks of coolness only added to the surreality, even more weird in some ways than the dreamscape he had escaped from.  
  
Dean was lying beside him, jeans unfastened and clothes askew. Otherwise, he looked more like the Dean that Sam thought of as his brother than he had since Sam had first found him in the desert after trying to break the curse. Sam had buttoned his own jeans back up, and only hoped that no one had managed to get an eyeful while he had been... distracted. Unlike the last two times, Dean seemed in no hurry to leave, content to stay by Sam and watch the clouds race overhead.  
  
“They’re trying to tell me something, Dean. The angels, or the World.”  
  
Dean didn’t look at him, gaze still fixed on the sky overhead. This time, the fall had not been so bad, the power that swept through Sam had dragged him into the storm, but Dean’s attention had seemed firmly fixed. Even though the winds had been more violent, Sam had felt sheltered from them more, only having to struggle a little to keep himself pulled tightly together.  
  
“I miss you,” Sam said finally.  
  
Dean said nothing at all.

  
~~~~~

 

Bobby was waiting for Sam on the porch when he finally peeled himself off the field and headed back to the house.  
  
“Is he going to stick around?”  
  
“I don’t think so.”  
  
They both looked up to where the sky was clearing and the snow had already stopped.  
  
“He has good timing; I thought we were going to have to drag your ass to a hospital. Was that the curse, a vision, or some new unholy combination of trouble?”  
  
Sam smiled tiredly. “I think it was the flu, Bobby. And a lot of sleepless nights. Maybe with something else thrown in -- my dreams were weird.”  
  
“Something useful?”  
  
“I don’t know. The pressure in my head is gone. I felt like something was trying to tell me something; it felt important, but then I was awake and...” Sam shrugged awkwardly.  
  
“You were thrashing around, and bleeding, and sweating buckets,” Bobby grunted. “Waking you up seemed like the right thing to do.”  
  
“Can't blame you for that, and I don’t know if you woke me up, or if whatever was trying to communicate with me just lost its grip.”  
  
“You look okay now.”  
  
Sam nodded. “The only upside to any of this crap. I’m just tired now, my lungs feel clear and my fever’s gone.”  
  
“Back to the grind?”  
  
“Yeah. I don’t suppose you have any good news on your end?”  
  
Bobby snorted and stepped back so Sam could slip past him and through the doorway. “Depends on how attached you are to Vancouver.”  
  
Later that night, Sam drifted from a dream where he and Dean were playing pool on inky black felt with cues that looked like shotguns and balls that looked like planets. It was Dean, and not the demon, he faced across the table and Sam was trying to explain about needing  _Dean_  back, to help him find the Ward. But his brother just shook his head and motioned impatiently towards the game. Sam lined up his shot, and then the pool table melted away, but it wasn’t Dean he was left facing, it was his father. John smiled at Sam, then the crypt behind him opened and black smoke boiled out. Sam choked and struggled in the cloying darkness that was smothering him, fighting to get free of it...  
  
...and found his hands trapped in sweaty cotton sheets with the first light of dawn striping across the floor.  
  
Sam knew  _exactly_  where he had seen the runes before. He just wasn’t sure the cure wouldn’t be as bad as the disease.

 

** Chapter Thirteen **

I'm speaking in tongues, handling you  
I got religion now, look at it  
The days grow longer  
As we grow stronger  
So shed your skin baby, let it rip  
                                 ~Shed Your Skin, Indigo Girls

Bobby’s basement was like a rummage sale of the damned. The main workplace was nice, and Sam had always understood vaguely that there was maybe another room or two, but it turned out that there were entire little hallways and rooms blocked off with charmed padlocks and heavy furniture, weird contraptions and iron-bound chests. Sam realized fairly quickly that he had never really understood the full extent of how much supernatural  _trash_  Bobby had accumulated over the years. When he thought of Bobby’s basement, he thought of the panic room, and the two or three rooms off it that he knew were storage. But the place was an entire  _warren_  of tunnels and areas, with barely enough room to walk. Harsh white light from work lamps strung up with extension cords illuminated the areas. Sam wore gloves and tried to keep his hands to himself, but he needed something very specific and he didn’t want to ask Bobby if he didn’t have to. Mostly because he didn’t want to have to explain to Bobby what he was up to. He had tried contacting Castiel again first, for expediency if nothing else, but as promised, the angel had failed to appear, leaving Sam scrambling for a back-up plan.  
  
Sam had realized where the Ward had to be, he just didn’t know if Bobby would see things his way or not. An incredibly difficult task could quickly become a truly impossible one if Bobby stood against him.  
  
He stumbled over a rug that was fastened to the bare cement floor with what looked like iron spikes, and caught himself on a dresser. Set into the wood was a massive mirror. Sam frowned, rubbing dust off on his jeans. The reflection looked... odd. He was just leaning in to look closer when palms slammed against the wrong side of the glass and a terrified-looking woman faced him. She pounded on the mirror, casting frantic looks over her shoulder and pleading for help with her eyes. Sam stumbled backwards into a pile of cardboard boxes and went down, struggling to free himself from their unknown contents. A sharp crack echoed through the room and he looked up, shocked, to see a spiderweb fracture spreading out from where one of her palms hit the glass. With the break, he could hear her voice calling out for help, full of panic and fear. Then Bobby stepped over his sprawled legs and sprayed the mirror with some sort of clear liquid from what looked like a laundry bottle. The woman in the glass howled and vanished, the spider cracks running backwards in her absence like time had been thrown into reverse, until the glass was as smooth and untouched as when Sam had first entered the room.  
  
Bobby turned to look down at Sam, then offered a hand to pull him to his feet.  
  
“Holy water. Good for riot control.” He set the bottle on the dresser with his free hand. “There’s a reason people put padlocks on things, you know.”  
  
“Yeah, I'm... sorry.”  
  
“You could have just asked for the keys,” Bobby added pointedly, crossing his arms over his chest. “What the hell were you looking for down here anyways?”  
  
Sam shifted uncomfortably. “William Fuld’s Ouija board.”  
  
Bobby frowned. “I have that?”  
  
“My dad did. He carried it around in a suitcase for a few weeks in the trunk when I was about eight. I didn’t know about the hunting or what was really out there then, I just thought it was cool. He gave me the worst spanking of my life when he caught me looking at it after he told me not to.”  
  
“Your dad has his own lock-ups; why would it be down here?”  
  
Sam kept a wary watch on the mirror over Bobby’s shoulder. “When I was a teenager, I asked Dean about it. I... thought it might be interesting to try to contact the spirit world and I remembered the board.”  
  
“You boys sure put your own spin on normal teenage stupidity,” Bobby said dryly.  
  
Sam shrugged, not denying it. The Winchesters had put their own spin on everything they’d ever done. They couldn’t even manage to die right.  
  
“He told me it was in the storage shed in Minnesota; he also called me a few names,” Sam added, the recollection bringing a faint smile to his face that quickly faded. “But I ransacked that place when I sold stuff off eight years ago and it wasn’t there. It was on an inventory list of crap stuck in the back of the journal that Dad was going to move, but the list didn’t say where. But also on that list were the Tears of Artemis that I noticed you’ve got in that scummy fish tank upstairs.”  
  
“They blend right in with the gravel and rocks; seemed like as good a place as any to stick ‘em.” Bobby shrugged.  
  
“They give increased speed and accuracy, right?” Sam asked, curious.  
  
“And a hunger for the flesh of one’s own kind.”  
  
“That must keep things in the tank... lively.”  
  
“You don’t see more than one fish in that tank anymore, now do you?” Bobby grunted, picking his spray bottle back up. “I did get a trunk of crap from John awhile back. I think... I think it’s this way.”  
  
Sam gave the mirror one last look and was startled to see the woman’s eyes following him from the bottom of the frame where she was hidden mostly out of view.  
  
“Don’t mind her; she’s not going anywhere soon and gets bored easily. Once we’re gone, she’ll go on back to sleep until some idiot disturbs her again.”  
  
“What is she?”  
  
Bobby shrugged. “Something nasty. Rumor says she’s been trapped in that mirror for a good couple of centuries. She broke out about a hundred years ago, killed a bunch of people before she was forced back in. Man who locked her back up made the dresser and handed it down through his family.”  
  
“A family of hunters.”  
  
“Right. The last of them got killed off a decade or so ago and we shipped her out here. One of the several reasons I believe in padlocks, and I’d appreciate it if you’d not pick them. At least not until we get the current world-ending crisis resolved. Now, you want to tell me what the hell you want Fuld’s Ouija board for anyways?”  
  
Sam followed Bobby through the maze-like interior of his basement, ducking when the passageways were too short for his height. “I’m at a dead end; God knows where Dean is; I can’t find anything -- it seemed like maybe a shout-out to the spirit world wasn’t completely out of line.”  
  
Bobby stopped in front of a locked door and pulled a ring of keys from his pocket. He tried a few until finally one clicked in the lock, then shoved the door open with a screech of unoiled hinges.  
  
“Wait here,” Bobby directed, disappearing into the dark room.  
  
Sam waited obediently in the hallway, fidgeting and nervous. From the room, he heard Bobby’s low swearing and the clink of metal and glass.  
  
“You doing okay in there?” Sam called.  
  
“Did this thing have a planchette?” Bobby yelled.  
  
“How would I know?” Sam yelled back. “It was an interesting-looking board in a suitcase I wasn’t supposed to touch. Did they originally come with planchettes?”  
  
Instead of a response, Bobby stalked out of the room, something flat and rectangular wrapped in dark cloth tucked under one arm. “If it had one, it doesn’t now. Let’s get out of here.”

  
~~~~~

 

“So... what makes this board so special?” Rufus asked. He was busy packing his kit, planning to head out and try and deal with a number of unexplained, half-eaten bodies that were showing up on the banks of the Colorado River.  
  
“It belonged to William Fuld,” Sam explained, opening cabinets to find a shot glass. “He didn’t invent Ouija boards, but he was the guy who made them famous. Fuld claimed that it was messages from the spirits that gave him his business ideas that made Ouija boards so popular, which most people just blew off as marketing crap.”  
  
“You think he was telling the truth?” Rufus raised a skeptical eyebrow.  
  
“Whether he was telling the truth about that or not, it’s pretty certain that something was whispering to him through the board. And whatever it was made him do a Peter Pan right off the top of his factory in Baltimore,” Bobby explained. He pulled a shot glass off of a shelf and tossed it to Sam.  
  
“You’re going to try to communicate with spirits through a Ouija board that killed its last owner? I can’t _imagine_  how this plan can go wrong. What are you going to ask it?”  
  
Sam answered Rufus’ curiosity with a half shrug. “Still thinking about it.”  
  
Rufus nodded and shouldered his pack with a nod to Bobby. “I’ve got to hit the road. You want me to look into that lake while I’m out there?”  
  
“What lake?” Sam asked sharply. Sometimes, Dean bled into his sleep with images and sensations. It was fragmented and barely coherent, but Sam distinctly remembered a lake a few days ago. The water had shone like ice under the full moon, impossibly still, like something from a drawing.  
  
“Some lake in Colorado; I have to drive right past the place. A couple of days ago, the partially dissolved remains of some swimmers were found on the shore. Seems to be my week for that kind of thing so I looked into it some more. Apparently, overnight what had been a fairly popular local vacation spot turned from fresh water to acid.”  
  
“Do you have a picture?”  
  
Bobby and Rufus both gave him strange looks. “Of the bodies?”  
  
“Of the lake,” Sam replied impatiently, already walking into the other room to use Bobby's computer. It took him less than three minutes to pull up what he was looking for. He fell into the meditative practice Missouri had taught him: aware of each breath, focusing on them. He forced himself to look at the picture of each of the dead teenagers who had been swimming in the lake when it made its miraculous change. The article talked about volcanic gases and the violent changes possible with deep, cold waters. But the lake wasn’t volcanic, and Sam wasn’t confused about the cause.  
  
“Don’t worry about the lake, Rufus,” Sam said in a perfectly even tone. “I’ve got it covered.”  
  
He could  _feel_  the questioning look Rufus shot to Bobby behind his back, the rough grace of Bobby’s nod.  
  
“Singer.”  
  
When the door banged shut behind Rufus and Sam heard his car pull away, he turned. Bobby’s expression was grim.  
  
“The lake, Sam?”  
  
“Dean,” Sam said flatly.  
  
“You’re sure?”  
  
Sam shrugged. Bobby kept him pinned in place with his stare.  
  
“Forgetting the demon for a moment, I wasn’t going to call you on it with Rufus sitting there, but you want to tell me what you really want the board for? Without the bullshit this time?”  
  
Sam thought about hedging, but knew that Bobby would see right through it. He had gotten away with a few white lies to his father, and regularly pulled the wool over Dean’s eyes on things that were inconsequential, but never in his life had Bobby failed to catch him out. The world being in the state it was, Sam figured now was not the time to lose Bobby’s trust.  
  
“I need the Colt,” Sam said honestly. “No one’s seen it since Bela stole it in Pittsburgh. She told me and Dean during that fiasco with the rabbit’s foot that she found a lot of her targets by asking the spirit world. I figure... what can it hurt?”  
  
“The Colt?” Bobby looked puzzled. “I thought you were looking for the Ward?”  
  
“I am, but if the angels can’t find it, I don’t think a handful of restless ghosts can either, you know?  
  
“So how is the Colt going to help you? I can see why some other hunters might be interested, now that we can make ammunition for it anyways, but I thought you decided that taking the demons out one by one wasn’t a good solution? Something about it taking years and probably getting you killed early on? I pretty clearly recall you not being interested in doing that. Something changed I don’t know about?” Bobby’s eyes were narrowed.  
  
Sam squared his shoulders. “I need the Colt, Bobby.”  
  
“The Colt only does two things, Sam. And I’m not getting the impression you want it for its ability to kill damn near anything you shoot with it.”  
  
Sam didn’t say anything. Bobby swore and ripped the hat off his head, wiping at his sweaty brow, an angry flush rising up his neck.  
  
“You want to explain to me in short, simple words what  _the fuck_  you’re thinking to want to open the Devil's Gate for? You think we don’t have enough demons running around this planet already? Huh? You’d better answer me, Sam. And I better be plenty impressed, or you might be looking at doing a stretch in my panic room until you come to your senses.”  
  
“It’s in a place of great Chaos, Bobby. So great that not even angels can see through the fog. And... I’ve had dreams. Memories from the last time it was open.”  
  
“I was there the last time it was open, Sam,” Bobby growled. “All I saw were demons streaming into our reality.”  
  
“You weren’t standing where I was,” Sam insisted. “You couldn’t see inside.”  
  
“What ‘inside’?! There’s nothing inside but  _Hell_ , Sam!”  
  
Sam shook his head stubbornly. “When it first opened, there was a second before the demons came out, an instant where I could see inside, and it was... carved, like the outside, and in the floor... I swear, Bobby, I thought I saw something round. I didn’t think about it again, and I’m not one hundred percent certain now. But I’m  _almost_  sure, and I can’t think of anywhere else it could be. It makes sense. And I think what was going on in my head is something trying to show me that.”  
  
Bobby was quiet for a few minutes, arms crossed as he gazed at Sam appraisingly. “Sure enough to gamble the world on it?”  
  
“The world’s already lost, Bobby. We’ve sailed off the freaking cliff and are just waiting to hit bottom. Unless I wake up tomorrow with the magic answer to break the angels’ prison, this is the only lifeline I think there is. I have to take this chance.”  
  
Bobby was silent again, the weight of his stare heavy.  
  
“Bobby?” Sam asked quietly.  
  
Finally, Bobby shifted with a sigh. “Come on then, might as well see what the spooks have to say. Any reason you can’t just call up Missouri or one of her psychic buddies and ask them to riffle the spirit world?”  
  
“She’s not a medium. She doesn’t mess with ghosts or any of that stuff, and I don’t know anyone who can get an answer out of this any faster than we can try. Even the one or two who might talk to me... the negotiating and reassuring would take days. We can do this.”  
  
But try as Sam might, under the high sun or a moonless night, with Bobby, alone, by candles or just stars, the spirits said not a word.  
  
“Maybe they don’t like the shot glass?” Bobby suggested after Sam’s third sleepless night of trying. Sam gave him as much of a glare as he could muster.  
  
“Maybe they don’t like your house,” Sam growled back.  
  
Bobby opened his mouth to retort, when there was a bang on the front door and the stench of sulfur filled the air. Bobby’s eyes went flat and Sam felt the power bubble up inside of him from where it usually lay quiescent, the power Ruby had trained him to destroy demons with. Sam had had no cause to use it for half a year and reaching for it now attracted Dean’s attention, such as it was, in a way that Sam hadn’t felt since they had lain together in the field of flowers and snow.  
  
“Dean?” Sam was only aware he had spoken aloud when Bobby’s head whipped around to face him.  
  
“That’s Dean out there? Since when did he start sporting the sulfur stench?!” Bobby hissed.  
  
“Uh, what?” Sam blinked. “No --sorry. He’s in my head.”  
  
Bobby muttered something about not enough whiskey in _the world_ , grabbed the flask of holy water off his hip with one hand, and a sawed off from the counter with the other, and stalked to the door. Sam joined him after a moment, the link between he and Dean dulling away again as the demon apparently found nothing to hold it’s interest.  
  
They stood at the front door in silence for a moment, but when nothing else happened, Bobby handed Sam the shotgun with a shrug and pulled the door open. The only thing on the other side was a crimson envelope with Sam’s name written boldly across the front in a shiny golden ink.  
  
“Get the salad tongs,” Bobby grunted.  
  
Two hours later the smell of sulfur had completely dissipated and Sam and Bobby had run every test they could think of on the envelope to check for curses or other enchantment.  
  
“I’m just going to open it,” Sam said finally.  
  
“Sure there isn’t anyone you don’t like you could get to open it instead?” Bobby asked dryly. Sam ignored that and carefully pried up the edge of the crimson paper. Inside was a simple white business card. On one side was an address, on the other “Want the Colt? Come alone.”

  
~~~~~

 

  
“No one actually expects the person to  _come alone_ , Sam,” Bobby scowled, watching Sam stuff clothes into his duffle bag. “Everyone says it, but nobody does it. No one smart, anyways.”  
  
“Then I’ll have the advantage of surprise,” Sam retorted, examining the serrated blade Dean had left in the Impala’s trunk for him. Ruby’s knife.  
  
“I’d rather you have the advantage of staying alive!”  
  
Sam dropped his bag and turned to face him. “What do you want me to do, Bobby? Obviously, whoever sent the note has the advantage of information. But I’ve got a few surprises of my own, and if I could catch Ruby,  _who trained me_ , off guard, I think I’ve got a fighting chance against other demons.”  
  
“Other  _normal_  demons,” Bobby snapped back. “But hasn’t half the point of all of this been that it isn’t the usual garden variety we’re dealing with now?”  
  
Sam picked up the business card, with its perfect lettering and flamboyant delivery. “I’m not really getting the impression of sweeping cataclysms of destruction off of this, Bobby.”  
  
“How does whatever sent this even know you’re after the Colt?” Bobby demanded.  
  
Sam slipped the card into his pocket. “I don’t know. But I’ll be sure and ask when I get there. Did you find out anything about the property?”  
  
“Only that it’s owned by Aleister Incorporated. Some kind of shell company that deals mostly in finances. Give me a few more days and I can ferret out more.”  
  
“Will it change anything about my going?”  
  
Bobby scowled. 

 

** Chapter Fourteen **

Mercenaries of the shrine,  
Who are you to speak for god?  
With haughty eyes and lying tongues,  
And hands that shed innocent blood.  
                                ~Strange Fire, Indigo Girls

The trip was long, and complicated by having to find a detour where more than a mile of I-40 had crumbled into the ground, taking over a hundred cars and trucks with it. Unable to do anything to help except try and deal with the source of the problems, Sam gritted his teeth and pressed on. It was after midnight the next day before he approached the property listed on the card. Sam pulled off the road about half mile away and continued on foot. He tried to be stealthy, but after spending the past year with Dean, he understood just how clumsy even his best efforts were. Still, he wasn’t going to walk up to the front door without even trying to do some reconnaissance.  
  
The house was... not what he expected. Sam stared up at the elaborate mansion from his position crouched in the prickly bushes on the wrong side of a fifteen foot iron fence. Armed guards in suits patrolled the gate and Sam didn’t know as much about cars as Bobby or Dean, but he was pretty sure the one sitting in the driveway cost as much as most people’s houses.  
  
After an hour of observation during which nothing interesting happened, Sam debated his options. He could hang out in the bushes indefinitely, but there was little advantage in it. Whoever lived in the house was well guarded and unlikely to randomly go for a walk alone in the woods where Sam could grab them for a private chat. He was certainly at the right place; even at this distance, he could feel the demonic nature of the men standing watch.  
  
With an inward shrug, Sam brushed the dirt off his knees and walked as casually as he could to the driveway. The security there watched him but didn’t seem alarmed by his approach. Sam fished the business card from his pocket.  
  
“My name is Sam Winchester,” he called through the bars of the gate. “I was invited.”  
  
The demons glanced at each other and one of them spoke into the edge of his jacket for a moment, then nodded to the other, and they stepped back. The gate ground slowly open. Sam waited for instruction, but the guards ignored him. After a moment of indecision, Sam walked past them and towards the mansion.  
  
The front doors were taller than he was by a good five feet and there was no doorbell. Tired of feeling awkward, Sam raised a hand to knock on them, but one swung open soundlessly before his skin could touch wood. The mousy woman standing there had a wide-eyed look of nervousness and Sam could feel that she too was a demon. She pointed one hand down a marble hallway and scurried away. Sam felt the reassuring weight of the gun under his jacket and the knife at his back, and headed down the hall. The entire situation was making his skin crawl and he was seriously rethinking his decision to do this alone.  
  
The finely appointed study with its dark woods and leathers he found at the end of the long hallway was an interesting change from the high polish and shine he had seen in the entrance, but all of Sam’s attention was drawn to the man standing by the fireplace watching him with open appraisal in his eyes. He was some inches shorter than Sam himself, with a stocky build and a receding hairline. The expression on his face wasn’t threatening and he held a brandy snifter in his hand instead of a weapon.  
  
Sam found none of it reassuring. The energy emanating from the demon in front of him easily made it one of the most dangerous of the kind he had ever encountered, behind only Azazel and Lilith herself.  
  
And Dean. But his brother didn’t count in this estimation.  _No_  other demon felt like  _that_.  
  
“Ah. Mr. Winchester. You must have flown to reach me here so fast. I wasn’t sure you were going to accept my little invitation at all. So pleased you could join me.” The demon sank into a horribly expensive looking leather chair with a smug, expectant expression.  
  
“Who are you?” Sam demanded.  
  
“I’m a... concerned party of the current situation. I have it on the very best authority that you know all about that, so I won’t go into boring rehashments right now. You can call me Crowley.”  
  
“Crowley,” Sam repeated. “Aleister... Crowley. Really?” he asked incredulously.  
  
The demon shrugged. “No. Maybe. Does it really matter to you?”  
  
“You said you had the Colt. That’s the only reason I’m here.”  
  
“A young man with focus; I like it. I do, as you say, have the Colt.” Crowley took a sip of his drink, watching Sam thoughtfully.  
  
“How did you know I was looking for it?”  
  
Crowley walked over to the massive desk and took a seat. “Spirits are horrible gossips, but they are in the same business I am.”  
  
“And that is?’  
  
Crowley smiled, and in its curve, Sam could see the inhumanity of his nature. “Information. Secrets. Bargains. I am the King of the Crossroads demons, Samuel Winchester, and I’ve heard your name before.”  
  
Sam struggled hard against the desire to rip Ruby’s knife from its sheath at his back and lunge across the desk. It was a Crossroads deal that had cost Dean his human life, and Crossroads demons that had literally laughed in Sam’s face when he begged for any chance to redeem his brother from Hell. Crowley’s smile spread wider as Sam fought to keep his internal conflict off his face.  
  
“Surely you aren’t still caught up in old times?” Crowley drawled. “It’s a brave new world we have to deal with now. Even your dense, modern population is starting to clue in that things aren’t just business as normal outside of their safe, little houses these days. Too many demons, not enough holy water, as they say.”  
  
“You made the deal with Bela,” Sam guessed tightly.  
  
Crowley shrugged. “Any demon can make a deal. My people are just a little more... dedicated, to the process. That particular incident you mention was a personal favor to Lilith, she of the raving fanaticism and scorched earth policies about disloyalty. She asked me to remove the Colt from the equation, and remove it I did. Little details about who, and when, and where -- inconsequentials. I have the Colt, and you want it.”  
  
“I won’t make any  _deals_  with you,” Sam spat.  
  
Crowley drained what was left in the glass. “Mate, I think you’d crawl on broken glass using your intestines as a bridle if that’s the price I set for the gun. So let’s not be waving our bravado about just yet, not when we’ve a world to save.”  
  
“We?”  
  
“Of course,” Crowley responded, faint surprise coloring his tone. “What did you think this meeting was about?”  
  
“I...” Sam blinked. “Why would you want me to have the Colt? Why contact me at all? The only thing I want it for is to kill other demons.”  
  
Crowley shrugged. “You think demons are some big, happy family that all want the same goals?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“'No' is right. Oh, there’s a certain level of crazed fanaticism at the top, but all of them kind of grew up together, you could say. They have some grand dream of glory days and a figurehead to lead us all down the path into domination and other boring sorts of things.”  
  
“Boring?”  
  
“Certainly. How dull would things be if the entire planet was nothing but brimstone and corpses? I personally find humanity quite entertaining. And exploitative, of course.”  
  
“And these new demons are more powerful than you,” Sam surmised with a thin smile.  
  
“Yes. They are," Crowley admitted without a trace of shame. "I’m comfortable here and I have no desire to be chief bootlicker after they’ve done fought it out amongst themselves to be top dog. If they do manage to actually spring Lucifer, that would be even worse. I have... other ambitions.”  
  
“So you’ll send me out as some kind of assassin to pick them off?”  
  
“Do I look completely stupid to you? You’d have the life expectancy of a blow fly if you tried something like that. Not to mention everyone knows where the Colt is and I’d be crucified for Lilith’s amusement for the rest of the millennia. Or longer. No one willingly subjects themselves to that.”  
  
He refilled his glass and motioned for Sam to sit. Sam grudgingly took a seat on the edge of a leather sofa, starting to feel stupid standing in the middle of the floor while the demon lounged at ease.  
  
“Do you know how I got to my position? I’m not particularly ancient as demons go. I’ve come quite far in my brief time below.”  
  
“No,” Sam said impatiently when Crowley seemed to be actually waiting for an answer. “Do I care?”  
  
“It’s a strange phenomenon in Hell," Crowley mused. "No one there is very curious about things either. They only care about power and suffering, but few have the patience to seek those things in any but the most brutal and obvious ways. Even the strongest, the most ancient among us, lack certain subtleties. It’s a rare and dangerous demon that can see beyond their immediate gratification.”  
  
“But not you.”  
  
“Hardly. I’m... curious, about all sorts of things. All sorts of  _secrets_. Secrets like what really keeps the demons bottled up behind the Devil's Gate.” Crowley snapped his fingers and the windows and doors slammed shut. Magic made the hair stand up on Sam’s skin and he had the sudden feeling of being trapped in a smothering box. The temperature seemed to rise ten degrees and sweat broke out on his skin.  
  
“I know what you  _really_  want the Colt for. And it has nothing to do with killing off a few piddling demons, not when you can banish them  _all_. ”  
  
Sam said nothing, tensed to act.  
  
Crowley smiled. He held up the glass in his hand as if admiring the liquid by firelight. “Nothing to say?”  
  
“What do you  _expect_  me to say?” Sam demanded in a tight voice.  
  
“I don’t expect you to  _say_  anything.” Crowley slammed the glass down onto the desk. “I  _expect_  you to take the Colt, and yourself, out to that miserable cemetery and do something about the plague of demons currently ruining my investment opportunities. I’ve grown accustomed to a certain way of life, and I don’t appreciate having it interrupted. Anyone interested in carving an earthly niche for themselves and the power to make the crossing is already here. With one action, you can send then all packing back to Hell without even enough strength to scream. Their enemies will enjoy that. You win, I win, everyone on this benighted planet wins.”  
  
Sam frowned, seeing a logical fail with Crowley’s plan that he didn’t believe the demon had overlooked. “It would banish you too.”  
  
“Hardly. I have some holdings in the Pit as well. Modest, compared to what I enjoy here, but suitable for a brief vacation. I have no intention of being caught in the destructive blast of what you plan to unleash. I will simply return once it’s over and pick up the pieces.”  
  
Something else occurred to Sam. “You said the Ward is keeping the Gate closed. If I break it...”  
  
Crowley rolled his eyes. “Not closed. The  _door_  keeps it closed, moron. The wards carved inside just keep everything bottled up in Hell until the door opens. The Ward you’re after beefs them up enough that even more powerful demons can’t saunter though; we have to will ourselves across the planar divide -- and I can’t tell you what a pain in the ass that is. At the moment, those demons inclined to make the trip are already here, enjoying an unprecedented feast at the expense of the population. After you wipe out the current infestation, you’ll still see the occasional crossover -- but not any worse than what you hunters have dealt with for centuries. Just close the crypt back up behind yourself after you retrieve your little trinket and all will be well.”  
  
“The banishment is only good for a hundred years,” Sam pointed out cautiously.  
  
“I know.” Crowley shrugged. “But in a hundred years without anyone looking over my shoulder and finding other annoying things for me to do, who knows what kind of kingdom I can build? And don’t think I don’t know your grand plan in all of this either. Do you really think you can dismantle the Rendering? Bring an end to all of the suffering in Hell and the demons that thrive on it?” He raised an interested eyebrow.  
  
Sam shrugged. “I’m going to try.”  
  
Crowley raised his glass in mock salute.  
  
“The angels have been moldering in the Pit for longer than even I can fathom. I would wish you luck with your quest, since you haven’t a prayer, as they say, in Hell. It’s certainly odds I’m willing to play for a chance to run these smug bastards off my turf.” He drained his glass again.  
  
“The Colt?” Sam asked, wanting to be far away from demonic intrigue and Crowley’s smug appraisals.  
  
“I want your word, first. No changes of plans, no backing out. And if you get caught, you swear blind to Lilith that you stole it. She won’t find incompetence as interesting as treason.”  
  
“I told you, no deals.”  
  
“Then no Colt,” Crowley said flatly. “I told you what I am; I don’t give things away without a fully enforceable understanding. I want your promise that you will take that gun and do everything in your power to send every demon on this planet packing back to Hell, and you’ll do it without mentioning my name.”  
  
“And if I do?” Sam demanded.  
  
“You think I’m going to demand your soul to decorate my palace in Hell?” Crowley shook his head. “I think you’ve spent too much time with your brother for that to be interesting to me for long. I have a better place for your soul if you try and wriggle out.” He reached into a drawer of the desk and pulled out two things: a black gun case and an empty mayonnaise jar, Hellman’s label still attached. “We can keep that pesky thing in here, all nice and shiny. Like a glowing paperweight.”  
  
“You can’t be serious,” Sam said flatly.  
  
“Serious as Hell,” Crowley replied with the smile Sam had seen on the face of almost every used car salesman he had ever encountered. “I’m certainly willing to give it a try, anyway.”  
  
“I don’t think my brother would take that very well.”  
  
Crowley shrugged again. “I don’t have the impression your brother is in much if a state to care about it one way or another. I don’t even know why he’s still hanging around here at all. Hopefully he will leave soon; he’s bringing down the tone of the whole neighborhood. But first things first; do we have a deal?”  
  
Sam’s gaze darted between the empty jar and the gun case. He had no idea if it was possible for Crowley to trap his soul like that, but it really didn’t matter anyway. “Fine. You give me the Colt, I’ll do my best, and your name stays out of it.”  
  
“Excellent.” Crowley rose from his chair and walked around to the front of the desk.”Come here, then.”  
  
“What for?” Sam asked warily.  
  
“Come now, Samuel. You’ve been around too long not to know how deals are sealed.”  
  
Sam didn’t know why he even bothered arguing about things like that anymore, but he couldn’t physically force himself to walk over to the demon by the desk. He settled for staying sullenly on the couch until Crowley crossed the deep pile rug and sat next to him with a sardonic smile.  
  
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d be this shy after all that rumor says you’ve been up to,” Crowley remarked.  
  
“Shut up,” Sam growled.  
  
“You haven’t got a lofty leg to stand on, and we both know it. Now lean down a bit and cooperate; we both have better things to do with our evening.”  
  
There was nothing inherently offensive in the warm, dry lips that pressed against his own, or even the tongue that swept into his mouth, firm and demanding his compliance. Crowley tasted like Brandy, and Sam held still, letting the demon deepen the kiss to his satisfaction. Then something unexpected happened and suddenly the kiss was the last thing Sam was focused on; Dean was in his mind, and his brother was  _pissed_. All Sam could see was gray, and all he could taste was rage. He was suddenly aware that the screaming wind he heard wasn’t just in his head and the sound of shattering glass exploded in his ears.  
  
Crowley let go and shoved Sam back as if his touch burned, and Sam’s eyes flew open. The finely appointed study looked like a tornado had ripped through; rugs and furnishings smashed and scattered. Only the corner where Sam sat was untouched -- the couch, the desk, the mantle behind it. With the demon no longer touching him, the fury in Sam’s mind wavered and retreated, sliding easily back into the corner he thought of as  _Dean_. His brother’s awareness wasn’t entirely gone, but Sam could ignore the quiet seething for now.  
  
On the couch in front of him, Crowley’s eyes narrowed as he looked around the room before his gaze came back to rest on Sam, a question in his eyes. For his part, Sam just wanted to wipe his mouth and find something to drink to wash away the sensory memory of the kiss, but wouldn’t give the demon watching him the satisfaction. He met Crowley’s eyes instead with the defiance that was his family’s number one stock in trade.  
  
Crowley smiled faintly, realizing Sam had no intention of explaining the sudden whirlwind of destruction.  
  
“Right, then. No more kisses for you, mate.” He rose and crossed to the desk, Sam following on his heels.  
  
He didn’t realize he was holding his breath until Crowley pulled the Colt from the lined interior of the case and held it out to him. Sam wrapped his fingers gingerly around it, having trouble believing that anything in this mess could come so easily to him, but the cool metal and the weight were real. He checked the cylinder.  
  
“I think you overlooked something in our  _deal_ ,” Sam said coolly.  
  
“Oh?” Crowley raised an eyebrow. Sam leveled the Colt at his head. “Ah, yes. I thought that might come up.”  
  
A low growl rumbled from somewhere around the middle of Sam’s back and hot breath ruffled his hair. He froze.  
  
“What can I say?” Crowley spread his hands. “I have a thing for dogs. Hell Hounds are my particular breed of choice.You were just leaving, I believe?”  
  
Sam stalked to the doors, stepping carefully through the wreckage, and wrenched one open.  
  
“And, Sam?” Sam turned back reluctantly. Crowley held up the mayonnaise jar meaningfully. “Don’t forget our agreement.”

  
~~~~~

 

“You made  _another_ deal with a demon?!” The incredulity in Bobby’s voice was as clear on the phone as it would have been in person. Sam had no problem imagining the expression on his face. It was almost four a.m. and he was well on his way to Wyoming. He didn’t know the name of the town he was driving through, but it was eerily deserted, even for the dead of the night.  
  
“What can I say, Bobby,” Sam grumbled. He had driven hours before making the call until he felt up to enduring the lecture he knew would be coming. “He had an agenda; it works out with mine. I wasn’t going to argue with him. It’s not like he asked for anything but that I do what I’m going to do anyways, and not broadcast his involvement to the countryside. Big deal.”  
  
“You should have shot him.”  
  
“I thought about it. His pet persuaded me otherwise,” Sam growled.  
  
“Pet?’  
  
“Hell Hound. Maybe more than one.”  
  
“Fine. You’re on your way to Wyoming?”  
  
Sam was watching the surrounding streets uneasily and missed the question. Even the bars were dark and silent. “What?”  
  
“Wyoming,” Bobby repeated. “You’re on your way to the Gate?”  
  
“Oh, yeah. Late tomorrow, probably.”  
  
“Are you okay, Sam? You sound a little distracted.”  
  
“I’m fine. It’s just... a little weird around here.”  
  
“Weird how?” Bobby’s voice sharpened.  
  
Sam sighed. “Weird like I need more sleep and less stress.”  
  
“I’ll meet you at the cemetery. Don’t do anything until I get there.”  
  
“What are you going to do for me, Bobby? Catch demons as they come streaming out of the Gate?”  
  
“I’m going to watch your back, you damn fool, to make sure nothing takes a stab at it while you pursue this hare-brained scheme.”  
  
Sam smiled despite himself. “Thanks, Bobby.”  
  
Bobby snorted and hung up.  
  
But without the phone call to distract him, the creepy feeling that something just wasn’t right was even stronger, and Sam patted his jacket where the Colt was tucked to reassure himself of its presence.  
  
On the bridge up ahead, Sam could see fog starting to roll in, but the only detours would add almost an hour to his travel time. It was late, he told himself. It was normal for there to be no traffic. He called himself a coward and pressed on. When streetlights began blinking off just as he reached the center of the bridge and the engine shut down, he called himself worse things.  
  
Sam tried his cell phone, unsurprised when it was dead. He waited for a few minutes in the car but... nothing happened, and so reluctantly he climbed out.  
  
“Hello?” he called into the fog. He could still see the bridge rails and the sky overhead, but any glimpse of distant lights or signs of life were obscured.  
  
“Hello?” he tried again, but nothing answered. Sam was just about to try walking off the bridge to get away from whatever weirdness was happening when something disturbed the mist and he spun. About twenty feet away from him stood a woman in a khaki skirt and a button-up. Her blond hair brushed her shoulders and her shoes were sensible flats. She looked like she had been dropped off from a casual outing at the mall, but there was nothing casual about the power Sam sensed pouring out of her. He knew exactly what this was.  
  
“You are an abomination,” it spoke in a remote voice that offered Sam little hope it would see reason.  
  
Sam backed away from the angel slowly as it advanced on him one step at a time. He almost stumbled on the edge of the sidewalk but managed to keep his balance instead of sprawling helpless to the pavement, which was already an improvement from the last time an angel had called him out.  
  
“You and your accursed family bring only misery and pain to those around them, and now you work to visit even more upon the world.”  
  
“Look, uh, I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but--”  
  
“My brother has counseled patience in this matter, and I know he has rendered you aid. But no more. You have the key to the Devil’s Gate, which you have already seen opened, and mean to open it again.”  
  
Its eyes were glowing now and Sam flinched. “It’s not like that! I have to open the Gate. There’s a Ward inside I have to use to send the demons back!”  
  
Something faltered in its countenance for a moment, and Sam thought he had reached it, but then its chin lifted and his heart sank.  
  
“No one has seen the Ward you speak of since before humans even came to this land. Not even angels know where it has gone; it is convenient that you would claim to know that it lies in a place that will spill forth demons across the land.”  
  
“The demons are already here!” Sam yelled at the angel. “A few more won’t make a difference, and when I find it, I can send them  _all_  back! I’m telling you the truth! Where else could it be that angels couldn’t find it?!”  
  
“The Great Maelstrom, the Gate of Stars, Merete’s Labyrinth, the Cape of Sorel, in the Palace of Keys, the Cry--”  
  
“Oh.” Sam blinked. “I’ve, uh, never heard of any of those.”  
  
“There are a multitude of places the Ward could be hidden from angelic sight. It has never been a quest of ours to find it.”  
  
“But it  _isn’t_  hidden in any of them; it’s in the Devil’s Gate. It’s... doesn’t it make sense?!” he asked desperately. “Its power is helping to stop demons from slipping through the Gate.”  
  
“The stone of the crypt was carved by angels from rock our Father made sacred. If the stone was laid bare across the Gate itself, it would be enough to hold Hell back; the Ward is unnecessary.” Its tone was implacable, but Sam had to imagine the only reason he wasn’t already smeared across the concrete was that it didn’t really want to destroy him; it just seemed to think it had to.  
  
“Maybe the lesser demons,” Sam insisted. “But with the Ward inside, even the strongest can’t just come through. Just... give me a chance. If I’m wrong, then you can slam it shut and turn me into a grease spot then.”  
  
“You know that already the demons are gathering to usher across the army that waits. They believe they will have the power soon to destroy the crypt and open the gate themselves; they would know that would not be possible unless Lucifer himself lent them power to that task, not if the Ward is there.”  
  
“They don’t  _know_  it’s there,” Sam insisted. “Just like  _you_  didn’t. Someone, somehow, put it there almost twenty thousand years ago, and it’s been holding them down ever since. They don’t know, but  _I do_ , and I need this chance to buy time so I can free the angels in Hell. Isn’t this what you  _want_? What you  _all_  want? Your precious balance back?”  
  
It watched him for a moment and Sam clung to hope. He remembered what Castiel had said about the division in Heaven, the confusion and the discord. That having the angels in Hell trapped disturbed the Order. It was why he had helped Sam at Illchester, and why he had answered him just weeks ago. Castiel still believed that a restoration was possible; Sam just had to hope this angel did too.  
  
“No. No,” it finally said. “I stood by and did nothing while the demons wrecked misery and shattered Seals because I believed the Apocalypse would bring our Father back to us, to right Order and restore harmony to our ranks. But that chance is gone, and without that hope... I have shepherded these people too long to allow you to visit this destruction on them. Destruction will come, but not at your hand.”  
  
“I’m not trying to free demons!”  
  
It seemed awkward to promise to send back any he might release along the way, and he knew the angel wasn’t listening anymore. Power was building in the air. Sam pulled the Colt out of his jacket. He pointed it at the angel, hoping his father had been right about it being able to kill anything, but the brilliant light pouring out of its host was making it hard to aim, or even look at. Before he could pull the trigger and just hope he hit what he was trying for, lightning blasted into the bridge, throwing him from his feet and sending the Colt skittering across the asphalt. It landed only inches away from a very familiar form.  
  
“Castiel,” Sam gasped, using the bridge rail to get back on his feet.  
  
Castiel did not turn or make any sign of acknowledgement to Sam, all of his attention on the angel he was facing.  
  
“Do not do this,” he warned.  
  
“I have no choice. This should have been done years ago. He is an agent of Entropy, and would bring more Chaos to this World.”  
  
“Entropy is not our enemy, and he is a living man. He is free to make his choices, and acts in matters with which we are forbidden to interfere.”  
  
“What is forbidden?” the angel cried. “Our Father is gone; who shall gainsay our actions if we choose to take them?”  
  
“Sam, go,” Castiel ordered.  
  
Sam, eyeing the Colt, took a few steps forward.  
  
“I need the--” was as far as he got before the building power spiked and he was thrown backwards as the titanic forces of two angels slammed into each other. The air caught fire and scorched his lungs even as the bridge he had been standing on exploded into rubble. Time seemed to freeze for Sam for a heartbeat; he was aware of all things for that singular second, before a chunk of concrete caught his temple and all he was aware of was black. The last image he registered that followed him down in unconsciousness was the sight of the Colt by Castiel’s feet, melted into a silvery puddle of metal by the spell-rending fury of angelic rage.

 

** Chapter Fifteen **

Beneath the stains of time  
The feelings disappear  
You are someone else  
I am still right here  
                    ~Hurt, Johnny Cash

“Eat something, Sam.”  
  
“Why?” Sam asked listlessly. He wanted to add something about his soul in a mayonnaise jar, but he had filled the terms of the deal and done everything he could with the Colt. Crowley should have added in a few caveats about psychotic angels and exploding bridges if he really wanted Sam as a paperweight.  
  
Sam hadn’t been feeling very well since waking up in the mud on the side of a river. The sun had just been rising and the area had been crawling with emergency vehicles and flashing lights, but no one had noticed him in the thin light of dawn, hidden by grasses and broken stone. He gave a brief thought to his car, now on the bottom of the river, and was momentarily thankful that it was registered in a false name and that he had left his Dad’s journal in the bedroom he used at Bobby’s. The only real loss was Ruby's demon killing knife that he had tucked under the driver's seat. Now lost in the depths of the cold, dark rushing water, Sam had little ability to try to retrieve it. Even if the area hadn't been crawling with people. Nothing else was irreplaceable and even if they raised the car, the knife didn't tie him to anything -- he could walk away clean. Or stagger away. It took him two hours to thumb a ride in the back of a pick-up, and from there it was just a matter of making his way back to South Dakota, depressed and unhappy.  
  
“Because you need to keep your strength up,” Bobby snapped, setting a bowl of soup down, then heading back to the living room where he had been looking for some information for a Hunter out in Georgia. Sam picked up the spoon and let it clink against the side of the bowl a few times. Then, when he was sure Bobby was out of earshot, poured it into the sink and went outside. He really missed the Impala at times like this. Lying out on any other car just didn’t feel the same, but Sam finally settled for sitting on the tailgate of one of the broken-down trucks littering the yard.  
  
The rosy sunset was marred with plumes of smoke from something fairly large burning a few miles away. Sam hoped it wasn’t an entire town, but couldn’t bring himself to turn on a radio and find out. Castiel wasn’t answering his calls, and despite some fervent research, there was no indication that any other key to the crypt had ever existed. It made no sense that Samuel Colt only a few hundred years ago had somehow been given the ability to create a key to a crypt that had been guarding a demonic portal for more than twenty thousand years. Unless...  
  
“Maybe it just wasn’t locked before,” Sam said aloud to the still evening air. “Maybe the natives weren’t stupid enough to go opening it, and it wasn’t until Colt’s time that it ever  _needed_  a lock.” He swore and kicked at a rock lying nearby, sending it skipping into the weeds. Sam flopped back down into the filthy truck bed and earnestly imagined himself on a beach somewhere. He’d never actually spent much time on a beach, but they seemed to be pretty popular and involve a lot of carefree lying around. Of course the way his life went, he would just be settling in for a nice, afternoon nap when Godzilla would surge up from the sea and try to eat the nearest available city.  
  
Sam was determinedly searching his imagination for a better vacation spot when something smacked gently against his boot. He sat up, startled, to see the rock he had kicked lying there again in the growing shadows of dusk.Then Dean walked up silently and settled onto the tailgate beside him. Sam blinked; Dean blinked at him and cocked his head, then turned to look out at where the smoke was still boiling into the sky. It did not escape Sam’s attention that there was liberal blood-spatter across the side of Dean’s shirt.  
  
“You’re early,” Sam said finally. “I don’t need you for a few more days.”  
  
The demon ignored him, seeming fascinated by the rising clouds of heavy smoke.  
  
Sam sighed. “I hope that wasn’t you.”  
  
“No,” Dean said.  
  
“Dean?” Sam asked sharply.  
  
The demon didn’t answer, but it also showed no signs of leaving. Sam rubbed at the healing scab on the side of his temple from the blow that had knocked him out when the bridge was destroyed and thought about matters. He wasn’t sure if it was Dean or Castiel that had rescued him from the river, and it didn’t really matter. It wasn't like he was going to be sending a thank you card either way. In fact, if it was Castiel, he might have a hard time not attacking him. The sight of the Colt melted into a little shiny puddle haunted what scant sleep he was getting and even just in glancing memory made his teeth clench.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Dean asked.  
  
Dean’s expression was actually concerned, and Sam felt a surge of hope, but a brief mental touch found nothing in the link but the silvery coolness of the demon. Still, it had asked. With no reason not to, Sam told the demon all about the Colt, and his experimentation with the Ouija board, and the note, and Crowley, and the angels, and the bridge. The demon listened expressionlessly, though Sam thought he heard a faint growl when he mentioned Crowley’s name, but otherwise it showed no reaction.  
  
“Where have you been?” Sam asked when he was done. Dean shrugged.  
  
“Around.” Then he slipped off the tailgate and disappeared back out into the grass until Sam could no longer see him.  
  
“You sure he was here?” Bobby asked about twenty minutes later in the kitchen when Sam finally went inside  
  
“He was here,” Sam confirmed, and pointed off to where they had been sitting. Bobby glanced outside and swore. The truck Sam had been loitering on was exactly as he had last left it, but while Dean had listened to his brother's story, all around them the gutted stacks of cars Bobby used for parts had been rendered into piles of metal flakes like grains of sand.  
  
“And he couldn’t have just made it snow again?” Bobby demanded.  
  
“He turned a lake in Colorado to acid, Bobby,” Sam reminded tiredly. “All things being equal, I think we’re getting off light.”  
  
“A little warning would be appreciated next time, Sam!”  
  
“I didn’t know he was here until I saw him," Sam said defensively.  
  
“I thought you could feel him in the area when he was close?” Bobby asked sharply.  
  
Sam looked out the screen door into the darkness, wondering if the darkness was looking back. The link he shared with Dean was as still and quiet as he had ever felt it. Sam had no idea where he was.  
  
“I guess not anymore.”

  
~~~~~

 

Sam had a missed call from Missouri when he went upstairs to try and get some sleep. He didn’t even feel hopeful that she had something for him anymore, and he was right. Her voicemail was mostly just making sure he was alive, and a pep talk on not letting setbacks slow him down. It was very Missouri, and very not what Sam was in the mood to hear. He knew Ellen had been in touch with Bobby, and a few other people who might have an interest in knowing Sam was still alive and kicking, but they were all fighting battles that could only end in their deaths, and Sam, who had failed to do anything about it, didn’t want to hear the fear and desperation in their voices. Bobby would tell them anything they needed to know. Sam just wanted to sleep. He was  _so tired_  of trying and failing. Of having the answer  _right there_ , and then having it snatched away.  
  
First Dean, and now the Ward. He missed his brother.  
  
Sleep was hard to come by, and when he did finally manage it, his dreams were full of people and conversations that made little sense and he didn’t remember from moment to moment in a revolving door of places. Eventually he found himself walking down a road. On either side were the fire-gutted remains of buildings; a half-burned sign lying in the rubble of one looked like it was in some Arabic language. The place was like none Sam had even seen in his life, the very construction strange-looking to his eyes. He could feel pinpricks of life all around him, and beneath his feet the street cracked and crumbled.  
  
 _A man-that-wasn’t-a-man stepped out from behind one of the buildings to face him; the not-man lashed out with power but Sam barely noticed, attention on a vending machine lying on its side instead. The bright red of the paint clashed with the dusty brown and soot black of the rest of the landscape, and he was fascinated by the disharmony. The man lashed out again and the vending machine was destroyed in the attack. Sam scowled, annoyed, and on the surge of that emotion a wall of rubble buried the man. He turned back to the machine; he liked it this way too, but he hadn’t been done feeling the color. With a sense of irritation, he continued on.  
  
At a distance, he felt the man-that-wasn’t slip free of the awkward vessel he had been contained within and drift away. Sam felt a rush of envy and jealousy; he caught the fleeing demon and crushed it. It crackled as he extinguished its essence, the sound absorbing his attention for awhile until all of the crackling was done. For an instant, he thought about breaking free of his own prison; there were so many other prisons that might be more interesting, and parts of this one felt like they were wearing thin. He could feel the nettle sharp irritants of Order digging at him sometimes now, and they made him angry and afraid. But when he started to pull free, there was a harsh tether on his leg. A reminder. He could have broken it almost effortlessly but... he had carved it there, with special words and pictures in his mind. He wanted it to stay there, it meant... something.  
  
Sam sighed and settled back. He had to stay in this prison; it was... important to the Other. Different emotions welled up when he thought about that. Confusion, frustration, joy, possession, wonder, all bound together with a shiny cord of something he didn’t have a name for -- but then a word floated up from where the entangling filters that hadn’t quite burned away still bound him. Love. He sighed again and kept walking. There was something he needed to do. He didn’t quite remember what it was, but it was important. Important to him, and important to the Other. When it was time, they would know._  
  
Sam bolted upright in bed, eyes wide and sleep a distant memory.  
  
"I am such an idiot."

  
~~~~~

 

“You want to run that by me one more time?” Bobby demanded.  
  
“I need your truck,” Sam repeated patiently, pulling food out of the fridge and tossing it on the table to eat on the go. “I have to go to Wyoming. I don’t need the Colt after all. Forget locks, I just need something powerful enough to blast the crypt open.”  
  
“The damn thing that was built to hold back demons? That’s stood untouched by anything since time freaking began –  _that_  crypt?” Bobby asked. He had only been awake for five minutes after Sam all but physically dragged him out of bed, and the three a.m. blinking on the microwave clock was not filling him with joy.  
  
“Yeah. Keys?”  
  
Bobby sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Let me change clothes; don’t fancy fighting demons in my pajamas.”  
  
Since Bobby had worn to bed the same clothes Sam had seen him in at dinner, he didn’t think that was actually a problem. He didn’t mention it, though; it didn’t matter.  
  
“No," Sam said firmly. "I don’t want you to come.”  
  
“Why the hell not?” Bobby snapped.  
  
“I’m going to open a Gate to _Hell_ , Bobby. You remember that from last time? Swarms of demons, looking for hosts? I don’t want anyone else there. It’s bad enough that  _I_  have to be there, but it’s not like I can just pick up a phone and ask Dean to pretty please go blast open the freaking crypt for me!”  
  
“I can handle demons, Sam.”  
  
“You can’t handle Dean,” Sam said bluntly. “ _I_  can barely handle Dean, and he might not recognize the need to protect you. I want you here, where I know you’re safe. I want you here in case this whole thing blows up in my face, and there’s no one else left who has a clue what’s going on. There are people who depend on you, who need you alive more than I need to worry about you being in that cemetery with me.”  
  
Bobby slumped into a chair. “You’re determined to do this?”  
  
“Before something  _else_  goes horribly wrong? Yes. Dean... responds to me. I know I can get him there, and I think I can get him to do this. I think he  _can_  do this. Everything else is a crap shoot.”  
  
“And after that is where your plan gets fuzzy,” Bobby commented sarcastically.  
  
“Can I take the truck or do I need to find a ride?” Sam asked pointedly.  
  
Bobby gestured with a thrust of his jaw. “Keys are in the drawer over there.”  
  
Sam found them and slid them in a pocket, then stuffed the rest of his finds into a plastic grocery bag. He paused to meet Bobby’s eyes.  
  
“Thank you,” Sam said sincerely. “Not just now but, you know, for... everything.” Unspoken was a lifetime of blood and fire, bullets, death and destruction. Gentle hands that helped him learn how to hold a gun, and set his first broken arm. The refuge from his father’s anger and mutual frustration of his teenage years, and the strong shoulder when his brother had died and his world had collapsed. Despite Sam’s own stubbornness and unwillingness to face certain harsh realities.  
  
Bobby snorted gruffly. “You can make it up to me by washing my cars when you get back. And bring that brother of yours with you! I’m going to be an entire week shoveling out the mess he made of good scrap; he and I need to have a chat.”  
  
Sam smiled. “I will Bobby, if I can.

 

** Chapter Sixteen **

I'll be the first to praise the sun,  
The first to praise the moon,  
The first to hold the lone coyote,  
The last to set it free.  
                        ~Welcome Me, Indigo Girls

Finding the old cowboy cemetery again hadn’t been a problem; Sam felt like the road was seared into his mind. His last trip had been under circumstances that, at the time, were the most difficult he had ever faced, and things like that stuck with you.  
  
In retrospect, he should have enjoyed the easy life while it had lasted.  
  
The wind was whipping wildly through the fading greenery at the tail end of summer. Ancient dust and new leaves swirled together against the ominous grey-green of the sky, like even the World was unsure of Sam’s plan. The long drive to the old cemetery had given Sam plenty of time to think about what lay ahead. The Colt was gone, truly gone now, and not just lost as it had been before. Sam didn’t need it to open the crypt, though; it would have been nice, but at the end of the day, he wasn't sure he wouldn’t have eventually had to go with this plan anyway. There were... advantages.  
  
Eventually Sam had to abandon the truck and continue the journey on foot. After some distance, he stepped over the iron rails that encompassed the cemetery and approached the old gate. It was badly weathered and hung off one of its hinges at an angle. In places, the fence was down entirely. When he had last visited, Sam had come in from the side, creeping along in a low scurry while trying to stop the man who had murdered him from committing an even worse crime. There wasn’t that kind of rush this time, though, and it seemed more... fitting, to walk down the grass-choked avenue of ancient tombstones in the way whoever designed the place had intended. The crypt itself was far more ancient than the old cemetery that surrounded it, and Sam wondered what the settlers had thought of it, and how they realized what it was. What the place had looked like all those decades ago before man had laid out their dead around it like some grim offering.  
  
He was aware of the observation of demons, it was impossible not to be. They stood outside of the massive iron ward like dark harbingers of doom. Which was probably fair, since Sam could feel them marshalling their power, collecting it from some vast, unknown well of strength. Not doing anything with it, just... building. He remembered what the angel on the bridge had said about demons planning to blast open the crypt themselves; he just hadn’t expected that to have been literal. But they were there, with their black eyes and their stolen flesh. Thankfully, they didn’t seem very interested in Sam, marking his passage as a curiosity. He imagined they thought he looked like easy sport, if they thought about him at all. One or two tracked his progress, but Sam wasn’t concerned about it. He had his own inner resources if any of them tried to interfere with him, and shortly they would have bigger concerns.  
  
Sam thought about all of the little things that had to have happened, over the centuries and thousands and thousands of years ago, to bring him to this place. He was just starting to explore the margins of his own gifts; the thought of how much talent, how much  _vision_ , those distant seers who had set all of this in motion must have wielded to have foreseen the need for the Ward in this time and place left him humbled, even here.  
  
Especially here.  
  
Or maybe it had just all been divine inspiration after all.  
  
Sam closed his eyes and prayed for the first time since his brother had died all those years ago. Whatever the angels thought, Sam still believed God was out there listening, somewhere.  
  
He opened them again and turned around when he felt the wind still against his skin. The worn, stone crypt with its gateway to Hell stood like a living thing to his back, but all of Sam’s attention was on the man who now stood facing him at the cemetery gate. Sam did and said nothing, and after only the briefest of hesitation, the man stepped over the demonic ward holding the others at bay and slowly made his way to Sam’s side. The filters were only the thinnest of tatters now, and no simple iron enclosure could restrain his presence. As he passed, grass aged and withered, curling to dust, leaving bare patches in the scrub. In other places, it sprang up as if a camera was fast-forwarding through time. Headstones crumbled as he brushed past, some only into more ruin, some into nothing at all, and some looked as clean and polished as if the stonemason had barely finished his work. The air rippled and a great silence fell throughout the cemetery. The crypt alone was immune to Dean’s... charm.  
  
The crypt, and Sam.  
  
Through it all, Sam stood unflinching, eyes locked on Dean’s face. This close, the pull of the curse was a tangible thing; he felt like they would be drawn together even if they both stood still. It was time. He could almost feel Dean’s pulse in his own flesh, and it was bewildering that Dean would bother with such a detail in his current state. Or maybe he wasn't bothering, and it was just another effect of the Entropy that was his nature.  
  
Entropic demon.  
  
Missouri had warned him, an angel had tried to kill him, and even Dean himself had told him in no uncertain terms that an Entropic Demon had no business on the Material Plane. Sam could see that in the way reality twisted wherever Dean went, and he could feel at a distance the pain and confusion that Dean suffered even with the link between them to offer what aid it could. He was trapped in the Plane with almost nothing left of the filters to bind, and protect, his nature. Sam had offered him a way out, and the demon had refused. Even in the cool confusion, Sam could also feel wonder, and interest, and... Dean.  
  
In that instant, Sam wouldn’t have severed the link between them even if he still had that power. He would never let his brother go, not alone, and perhaps they had always been meant to meet here like this.  
  
“Dean,” Sam called gently.  
  
Dean shifted his gaze from the rose vine that was creeping through the grass at Sam’s feet. Roses so red they were black in the wavering light were opening, their funeral perfume riding the still air. Dean’s eyes were the unnatural grey that seemed more like thin glass over an endless fall than the eyes of anything sentient, but his expression was curious.  
  
Safe from Dean’s Entropic aura by the curse that bound them, Sam knew there was only one real way to truly reach his brother. He held out one hand and projected his longing and his need and his desperate fear until Dean wrapped his own strong fingers around Sam’s and stepped close. Sam kissed him deeply, in regret, in relief, then bit Dean’s lip until he tasted blood and tumbled headlong into the maelstrom.  
  
Sam screamed his brother’s name in the silence of his own mind as he was subsumed by a being so vast and alien that Sam couldn’t feel anything recognizable. It had been nothing like this last time,  _nothing_. If he had felt this kind of wildness, this shredding of self, he would never have tried this; he wouldn’t have had the courage. Sam could feel his own nature starting to fray as the very fabric of his consciousness, his _being_ , was pulled, almost playfully, by the ripping currents of Entropy. It wasn’t painful so much as terrifying. And it was taking everything he could muster from his reserves to keep himself together enough to even remember his own  _name_. He gathered himself and tried one last time, feeling like he was being pulled under the water of an ocean he could never surface from, when the presence around him seemed to take notice and the wildness calmed. Still  _other_ , but now familiar too. If he had been properly conscious, Sam would have wept in relief. He let Dean hold him stable in the center of the storm.  
  
Still no words here; nothing so organized could be expressed to the demon he was wrapped within (around), but Sam didn’t need words in the inner landscape they shared. He drew pictures in himself, not pushing, just passive, letting Dean absorb what he was trying to show. He felt his brother twisting around him like smoke, considering. Sam changed the image, showing the demons waiting, and the world in flames. He let half-formed images of the destruction and the chaos flow through his mind, not focusing on any particular one, just bringing them up and putting his own emotional stamp on them. Misery, horror, grief, guilt, pain. An Entropic demon didn’t necessarily seek those things out so much as the chaos and the change that chaos brings, but those emotions went hand in hand with so much upheaval that Sam knew the destruction and emotions alone were unlikely to make the right kind of impression, but this wasn’t any Entropic demon and Sam knew his reactions would make a difference to  _Dean_. And they did. The storms of Dean’s truest self stopped and held still for a heartbeat, then roared to life with a thunder that drove Sam back into his own body. He felt the ground beneath his palms and tasted blood on his lips a split second before it felt like the earth tore asunder and the crypt  _exploded_  into ruin.  
  
When the echoing boom died down, chunks of sundered stone peppered the area, but none of them had hit Sam. He forced the overwhelming desire to drag Dean down into the grass with him aside in favor of scrambling into the broken stone, scraping his hands bloody trying desperately to reach what had been the floor. Already dark tendrils of smoke were rising up out of the deepest part of what had been the crypt less than a minute earlier. Nothing, nothing... Sam refused to believe he had been wrong. His fingers touched the carvings of the stone floor through the debris and he swore through dust-stung tears. The smoke was thicker now, full demons crossing through the Devil’s Gate now that there was nothing to restrain their free passage. Sam cursed his ancestry, angels, and everything that had ever gone bump in the night, when one nail caught on something that wasn’t stone. He froze, then shoved the last few rocks away and tried to see what he had felt. With his fingers he traced a circle that had been set into the floor; it was about the size of a dinner plate, and even through the dust, the intricacy of the carving made his head spin. A low moan sounded from the edges of the cemetery and Sam didn’t bother looking over his shoulder. He could feel the disembodied demons starting to realize their peril and dug with his nails to pry the wooden disk free. A demon tried to shove into his body, and rebounded against the anti-possession charm a split second before Sam felt his brother destroy it with contemptuous ease and possessive rage. Dean felt more like  _Dean_  in his mind than he had since that first night in the desert, and Sam could feel his presence, reassuring and protective.  
  
Finally, he found a place where the stone around the disk had weakened in the explosion, and a second later he had pried it free. In his hands it felt fragile, too thin and delicate to do what it  _must_  do. He blew off the heavy coating of dust, then looked up wildly to meet Dean’s eyes. Dean smiled.  
  
“Good job, Sam.”  
  
It was, but not quite done. The demons pouring out of the gate would be strong enough to blow out the encompassing ward in seconds, and then the more powerful demons waiting would rush in. Dean could probably take them, but maybe not do that and protect Sam. And there was no reason to take the risk. The demon had been right; he had needed Dean all along. Had  _always_  needed Dean.  
  
Sam stared into his brother’s green eyes, he wanted to say something, but the words to express it didn't come. It had all been there anyways, in the maelstrom, open for Dean to see, and there was no time left for goodbyes now.  
  
He smashed the thin wood of the master Ward on the broken stone of the crypt, and the world went away in a wash of white fire and sound.

  
~~~~~

 

“And then what happened?” Bobby demanded.  
  
“Fucking angels,” Dean growled.  
  
Sam rolled his eyes. “Castiel came through for me; he managed to shield Dean from the Ward’s effects, and then the Entropic angels restored his filters.”  
  
“Maybe I was badass enough on my own to resist the Ward; you ever think of that, Sammy?” Dean huffed, offended.  
  
“Were you?” Sam demanded. “And stop calling me that.”  
  
Dean looked a little sheepish. “I, ah, don’t actually know. A lot of the past few months and what happened at the cemetery is a little... blurry. And then the angels of Hell grabbed me and tied me back up. Which fucking  _hurt_.”  
  
“Just think of what it would have been like if you’d been under their thumb for eternity,” Sam said meaningfully, having listened to variations of the same general complaint all the way to meet up with Bobby, who wasn’t any better at following instructions than Sam and Dean were and had been less than an hour away when everything was settled.  
  
“I’m just saying, they need to tone down the personal touch to ‘firm and commanding,’ not ‘jumped by thugs.’ I think I have bruises on my  _soul_.”  
  
“I’ve seen what you use for a soul; how would you be able to tell?” Sam retorted.  
  
“You were telling me what happened?” Bobby interjected dryly.  
  
Sam shrugged, and took a sip of the soda he was drinking. “I passed out, and woke up to Dean shaking me and yelling.”  
  
“There was a freaking open Devil’s Gate about three feet from your toes! I was really hoping you had a plan to deal with it, you know?”  
  
“It’s not still open, is it?” Bobby asked in alarm.  
  
“No,” Sam snorted. “We shoved one of the more or less intact slabs over it and that cut it off. The stone is still blessed and warded; it should keep the lesser demons in place. More powerful demons can cross a lot easier now, but supposedly most of the ones interested in this Plane were already here, so... a few of the lesser ones got in, but since we just finished deporting every demon on the planet for a century, we can probably handle them.”  
  
“Now there’s more open real estate, though,” Bobby said grimly. “Maybe some of those that weren’t so interested before are going to find it a more attractive idea now.”  
  
“No.” Dean flipped the bottle cap from Sam’s soda into the trash. “It’s not the crowding that keeps the more powerful ones below; they have other attractions in the Pit. And now that we’ve just sent a whole ton of demons back there, stripped of power and helpless... trust me, they are going to find tormenting them a  lot more attractive than anything we’ve got.”  
  
“Good,” Bobby grunted. “Just have to find a way to stop anyone from messing with that slab, then. And you’re all better now?”  
  
“Better?” Dean shrugged. “I’m... like I was before again. I’m taking Sam someplace calm and relaxing for a few weeks, before I have to take him to someplace with padded walls, and then he and I still have the most important part of this entire mess ahead of us.”  
  
“Breaking the trap.” Bobby nodded in understanding.  
  
Sam just groaned and buried his head in his arms. “I did this quest; can’t you handle the next one?”  
  
Dean looked offended. “You would still be lying around Bobby’s looking sad and lost if I wasn’t there to help you out!”  
  
“I thought you didn’t remember anything.” Sam growled.  
  
“I remember a few things, bits and pieces of places I was and things I did. You. It’s interesting.”  
  
Sam shuddered.  
  
“Well,” Bobby sighed and stood up. “I’ve got a ton of phone calls to make, and Sam needs some sleep. You can fill me in on anything else in the morning. Need anything before I go?”  
  
Dean shrugged and slumped back in his chair. Sam shook his head. “No, I’m just going to pass out. Thanks, though.”  
  
When Bobby was gone, Dean gave Sam a smug look. “You left out the best part.”  
  
“That wasn’t the  _best part_ , Dean! The best part was getting all of the freaking demons banished before they managed to turn this place into something from Dante’s Inferno.”  
  
“I don’t know, I kind of liked my homecoming,” Dean mused. “You all desperate and hot, struggling out of your clothes and crawling over to me. Made me feel wanted. I wonder how many demons streamed into this reality while you were getting off?”  
  
Sam glared but didn’t respond. He had been doing well to function in the gap between tasting his brother’s blood and rending the Ward, adrenaline helping him squash down baser needs. His first real memory after that was the relief of Dean’s arms around him, and the lazy, post-orgasmic rush weighing his body down. A pleasantness that had dissipated in a rush when he felt the prod of another possession attempt and he realized that the  _freaking Devil’s Gate_  was still standing  _wide open_. From what Dean had said, it probably wasn’t more than about ten minutes from breaking the Ward to making his brother help him drag one of the slabs over the Gate, but the idea of how many demons could have come through in that amount of time made Sam groan and want to bang his head against the wall. At least they would be normal-grade problems, and someone else's at that.  
  
“Going to sleep?” Dean asked, pulling out the laptop and powering it on.  
  
“As soon as I can make myself get out of this chair,” Sam replied. He watched Dean for a few minutes in silence while his brother messed with the internet connection, like nothing in the past few months had touched him. Looking at Dean it could have been any one of a thousand nights they had shared on the road. Sam was forcibly reminded again that however real and genuine Dean seemed to him, this mimicry of his brother was the mask, and that glimpse of Entropy that Sam had experienced in him, that was Dean’s reality now. The reality his brother longed to return to.  
  
“Are you sorry?” Sam asked quietly. Dean paused, but didn’t pretend not to know what Sam was talking about.  
  
“It was my choice, Sam. You tried to cut me loose. I knew that, and I... knew that you needed me, for the job.”  
  
“I didn’t know you could see the future.”  
  
Dean shrugged. “What I could do then is not what I can do now. I'm a lot more limited like this, Sam. I can do most of what a Rendering demon can do, and I can bleed some of my true strength through the filters to do it better and meaner -- but I’m not what I should be. What I  _am_.”  
  
“I know.” And it was true, Sam  _did_  know, intimately and in detail.  
  
“Besides,” Dean added. “Maybe it wasn’t about the crypt at all. Maybe I just thought that you... needed me.”  
  
Sam’s eyes were dark and very serious. “I do.”  
  
Seven years in a prison of his own design had driven that home, the most recent disaster only underlining it. Sam didn't feel comfortable around other people anymore, they were all either possible targets or potential victim. Even at Bobby's  Sam could barely let down his guard unless Dean was there with him.  
  
Dean sighed, and for a moment, Sam thought he almost looked nervous, but then his expression smoothed out and his face grew unreadable. Dean had a lot of expressions, but true unreadability was pretty rare, and made Sam sit up straight from his exhausted slump.  
  
“Dean?” he asked sharply.  
  
“No time like the present, Sam.”  
  
“What are you talking about?” Sam frowned.  
  
“The curse. I have my filters, and they aren’t going anywhere, so no need to be worried about my sailing off and leaving you to shovel crap alone. You said you know what to do now so... let’s do it. Unless you need to catch some sleep first?”  
  
Sam had completely forgotten about that, still reveling in having a Dean he recognized at the other end of the link. That he could break that connection... No more link, but also no more cycle of blood and sex… they could be almost what they had been before Dean had died. Two brothers, against everything the world could throw.  
  
But back then, things had been... simpler.  
  
Sam wet his lips. “Uh, I need to... get some sleep first. And… think about it.”  
  
“Think about it?” Dean looked confused. “What do you have to think about? Isn’t that what you want?”  
  
Sam didn’t answer, just heaved himself out of the chair to get cleaned up, then sank gratefully into the welcoming and uncomplicated softness of bed.

  
~~~~~

 

Evening crickets were a soothing counterpoint to the rustle of leaves in a gentle breeze. The air was a comfortable temperature and carried the scents of cut grass and the ocean -- and something chemically and horribly sweet. Sam wrinkled his nose and opened his eyes, unsurprised to see the familiar park. A few people were out, laughing and holding hands. He turned his head to see the angel on the other end of the antique bench, sipping what looked to be the same drink Sam had seen in its hands at their first meeting, more than a year ago. The scarlet of its unnatural hair tumbled over shoulders clad in a dark green t-shirt that might have said Rage Against The Machine across the front. If it did, Sam didn’t want to know.  
  
“Back in business?” Sam asked after a quiet moment.  
  
The angel gave its Slurpee another obnoxious sip. “In a sense. Back to our familiar holding pattern. You did a good job.”  
  
Sam was surprised to hear that; by his own estimation, he had barely averted cataclysmic disaster, almost unleashed a reality-rending monster on the planet, and come within a hairs breadth of ending up as a paperweight for the amusement of a demon. “Thanks,” he said awkwardly after a moment.  
  
The angel seemed to understand his confusion. “Nothing has gotten worse than where it started with your involvement, and a few things have gotten better -- on a cosmic sort of scale. Since many would have failed the task entirely at this hurdle, you have, in fact, done a good job. Did you doubt it?”  
  
“You’re still trapped, and Dean is... still what he is.”  
  
“What he will always be,” the angel said gently. “You cannot change that, Sam. He wouldn’t want you to, even if it was possible.”  
  
Sam nodded, remembering what he had been brooding about before he fell asleep.  
  
“Did you really think we would torture him for eternity if you failed to free us?” it asked curiously.  
  
Sam starred at it. “I thought that was the deal. Dean thinks so too. I mean, you already gave him what he wanted out of the bargain, what else do you have to make sure he keeps his word?”  
  
“I could say honor, or the best interest of the World,” the angel said dryly, “but I can see you are in a place where arguments like that don’t hold much weight. Besides, we  _did_  make that deal with him. He must do everything he possibly can to free us, or else forfeit  _his_  freedom to our mercies for eternity. Or until someone else does the job for him, whichever comes first,” it said indifferently.  
  
“So then... why ask if I believed it?” Sam frowned.  
  
“ _Everything he possibly can_. Once he has done that, even should he fail, our bargain is still complete, regardless of outcome. Though he is no longer truly one of you, we only ask of your brother what has always been asked of humanity: that he try his very best. If that effort is not enough...” The angel shrugged one shoulder gracefully.  
  
“So Dean was never in any danger from you?”  
  
“Not as long as his effort was genuine and failure could not be avoided.” It gave him a sideways glance and an enigmatic smile. "I've enjoyed chatting with you again, Sam."  
  
Sam blinked, then blinked again at the red numbers of the motel alarm clock. He groaned and rolled into a ball. As grateful as he was to have the Entropic angels back in shouting distance, he hadn’t missed the headaches.  
  
“Sam?” Dean’s voice was sharp with concern. Sam didn’t answer him, but the low curse and sudden movement said he had figured it out anyway.  
  
Dean slid a finger slicked with blood between Sam's lips and he wrapped his tongue around it, eager for the promised relief. After a few minutes, the worst of the agony slowly released its grip against the building rise of an entirely different sensation.  
  
Dean was there when he reached out.

  
~~~~~

 

“I don’t want to do it.” Sam spoke aloud to the whitewashed motel ceiling. Sweat was slowly drying on his skin where he lay sprawled in the tangle of sheets, and his headache was still lingering, but nothing like the stabbing agony he had felt when he woke up. He fully intended to shower before he fell back asleep, but he had something to get out of the way first. Dean was beside him on the bed, flipping through an auto magazine he had stolen from the office when they checked in.  
  
“It’s a good five minutes late for that objection, Sam,” he said absently. “Not that it would have done you any good anyways. I don’t always mind wrestling, though; you can argue with me next time.”  
  
“Not  _that_ ,” Sam growled.  
  
“You have another ‘it’ you don’t want to do now?” Dean asked in resigned tones.  
  
Sam drew a deep breath. “The curse; I don’t want to break it.”  
  
He felt the mattress shift as Dean dropped the magazine to the floor and sat up. When Sam finally looked over at him, Dean’s expression was somewhat confused.  
  
“I don’t understand. I thought you--” Dean motioned to the space between their bodies, “--hated all of this. I half expected you to demand we break it off while still covered in dirt and rock dust up in the cemetery. Now you don’t want to break it  _at all_? Do you remember a couple of months last year where I dragged you around handcuffed to various furnishings over this curse? Because if I’m getting the wrong impression here, Sam, I don’t think you can blame me for it.”  
  
“That wasn’t over the curse,” Sam objected, propping himself up on one elbow, “that was over you being a manipulative jackass who couldn’t be bothered to open your mouth and explain what the hell was going on!”  
  
Dean raised a skeptical eyebrow.  
  
“And maybe I didn’t want to listen,” Sam admitted grudgingly after a moment. “But none of that matters. And I’m not happy about this, and some other things, but... we still have a monumental quest in front of us, and the curse is more than just sex and blood, you know? It lets us keep tabs on each other, which is important and useful, and it, uh, lets me keep a reserve of amped up anti-demon powers that I probably can’t use nearly as well without it, and...” He trailed off.  
  
“And it lets you keep me anchored in reach if something happens to the angels and I lose my filters. Again,” Dean finished.  
  
Sam resisted the urge to cross his arms. “The thought occurred to me. It happened once, it could happen again. If there’s a next time, I... can’t do this alone. And I don’t think I can complete this quest alone. And that isn’t even just about you! It’s everyone who’s trapped in Hell now, and everyone who will be. This is much, much bigger than just us, Dean, and it’s worth doing something I don't like once or twice a month to keep that safeguard in place. When I called Missouri earlier, she said she could try and help me, uh, tailor it, but... it didn’t sound like something fast. If I can do it at all--”  
  
His words were almost tumbling over themselves as he spoke rapidly, not sure who he was trying harder to convince.  
  
“You liked it well enough a few minutes ago,” Dean broke in casually, leaning back on the pile of pillows and watching Sam’s face for reaction. Sam had to backpedal to figure out which comment Dean was answering.  
  
“That’s completely beside the point,” Sam growled.  
  
Dean shrugged. “Let’s not break it then. You want the first shower?”  
  
“You don’t... want to talk about this?”  
  
“Nope," Dean agreed patiently. "Anything else you want to discuss?”  
  
“No, I just want to sleep. Possibly for a few weeks,” Sam sighed, flopping back on the mattress..   
  
“You’ve had a busy couple of months. We can probably afford a couple of days for you to rest up, but then we've got to hit the road. There's a big job left to do, and no one but us to do it."

**END**

 

**Other Stories in this 'Verse**

**A03:[F](http://archiveofourown.org/works/418832/chapters/696771) **[ortress](http://archiveofourown.org/works/418832/chapters/696771), [Skin and Bones](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2100609), Static, [The Things You Keep](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2100846), [Requiem](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2070777/chapters/4502640)****

**Livejournal:[Fortress](http://glasslogic.livejournal.com/10886.html), [Skin and Bones](http://glasslogic.livejournal.com/21364.html), [Static](http://glasslogic.livejournal.com/25664.html), [The Things You Keep](http://glasslogic.livejournal.com/43883.html), [Requiem](http://glasslogic.livejournal.com/45283.html)**

 

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